Fisch Filter
by twowritehands
Summary: They plowed their way out of his head, and now Robert is speaking his thoughts with no control. When he's sent away for some rest, Peter sends a spy for the Board. Robert's lack of a filter and Eames' lack of self control will blur the lines of loyalty
1. Chapter 1: Something's Wrong With Me

**Fisch Filter**

A/N: YAY! More Eames/Robert! This turned out to be about twenty thousand words longer than intended, and in first person no less which rarely happens, but because of that certain plot points had to be given justice. PLEASE REVIEW!

…..

**Chapter 1: Something's Wrong With Me**

My steps feel careful across the smooth marble floors of the lobby. Usually my pace is brisk, but today I might as well be fresh out of a coma and on my feet for the first time, strolling down the hallways, peeking cautiously into all the rooms. I'm not really moving that slowly; I only feel like I am.

Lethargic.

That word has never been me before. I'm active. I'm enthusiastic. I'm not sluggish, tired all the time. Not usually. But today feels off. Maybe I'm coming down with something. Maybe the flight from Sydney and Dad's funeral yesterday took more out of me than I thought. And last night can't have helped; no sleep.

The elevator is empty, and I'm relieved. So far my every encounter with a person has gone strangely. Freakishly. It's part of what makes me tired. I feel like I need to just go back home, get back into bed and wake up again, start this day all over because so far I've just been doing it wrong. I remember the director of my school orchestra, her terse words when my bow slipped on the strings.

"No. Start over."

I don't realize I'm even saying it out loud except that I see my lips move in the polished metal doors of the elevator. The skin over my sharp cheeks turns red, but I feel that more than see it in the fuzzy reflection. I clear my throat, a hand clamped over my mouth. I squeeze with my fingers, parting my teeth so I can feel my cheeks mash into the gap, and I keep squeezing until my fingers meet with the insides of my cheeks slick between them.

My lips are puckered fishlike into my palm for a moment, and I focus on the feeling of them stretching over my molars and kissing over my tongue. Then I release my face and sigh deeply. Composure. It's just a weird morning, the first day without Dad, the first day as CEO of the company.

The first day as an orphan.

The doors slide open with a chime and I step out, hardly aware that I'm fidgeting nervously with my cuff links. My secretary will be at her desk outside my office and I suddenly dread the sight of her.

Will it happen again?

Kirsten is pretty, straw hair, eyes like old blue denim, faded in the middle, but the edges of her irises are darker, still new. She makes a lot of noise on her way over, shoes with heels that could stake a vampire with one temper-tantrum stomp on his chest. Her legs are squeezed together in a pencil skirt, her breasts half on display in a blouse I can count her ribs through.

She's my best friend in the world; I hope this goes well.

"Rob!" she cries upon seeing me, "You look like hell."

I sigh, pressing on my eyes. She grips my bicep reassuringly.

"I miss him, too," she means my dad. He was always nice to her. He was nice to pretty women and men richer than him. In the end, there weren't any left of the second and far too many of the first.

Dad was the one who hired Kirsten as my secretary. I was given no say in it. I'm still not certain if she actually slept with him to get the position. I'm not going to ask; some things are best left alone. I still haven't spoken. Still afraid to try after what happened with the doorman, the driver, and Mr. Brandon outside the building.

After a minute, she senses I'm not going to talk about Dad and starts doing her job. I thank her silently for it. Perking up, she instantly starts on an overview of my day's schedule so far: Meetings. Brunch. Meetings. A Luncheon. Meetings. Squash with Peter.

I dread it all. I am going to have to speak. It will happen again if I do. It almost happens now. I bite my tongue and silence the thought. Or try to. It is still there, though. I hold onto my tongue with my teeth. So long as I feel that sharp pain, I can be sure I'm not talking out loud.

I'm not saying the thought out loud, but I'm shouting it in my head. But am I? Is that really _my_ voice in my head? Why has it turned against me? People are supposed to be able to control their inner voice, aren't they? But here it is, not shutting up, screaming at me, and I'm half inclined to believe that if someone put their ear to mine, I'd hear this thought distantly echoing in them like the sound of my blood echoing in a conch shell.

It's a thought which plagues me, a single thought. It hasn't gone away since I thought it. And I'm not even sure when it was that I did, first. It was just there yesterday as I made my way through security, retrieved my bags and left LA X. One thought, now whirling in circles in my head.

_I don't want to be him_.

"Rob?"

I snap out of it at the sound of her voice, loud with worry. My jaw drops. I realize it was tense. I taste blood as I feel my teeth tug out of the meat of my tongue with a biting sting. A warm metallic taste, slippery, fills up my mouth. I jerk the handkerchief from the breast pocket of my suit and press it to my lips.

"Rob?" Kirsten clacks back to my side, grips my elbow.

"I'm fine," I mumble into the silk at my lips. I make the mistake of pulling it away just enough for her to see the bloodstains. I knew better than to do it, but looking is kind of instinctual—I knew it was blood, but I kind of had to see it, see the quantity, or something. I glance, am somehow satisfied with the size of the red blossoms on the white fabric.

But she sees, too, and then it is ten minutes of freaking out on her end and me trying to reassure her with as few words as possible. It ends up happening anyway, the thing. The-there isn't even a word for it.

"I'm fine, Kirsten, really," I'm saying. "It was an accident. An accident. They happen all the time. Just—I just have to apply pressure and it'll stop."

But she's ignoring me, talking over me, demanding to see the extent of the damage, babbling something about a salt water rinse before I try to let it clot. She grates my nerves and I snap, "Jesus, can't you leave me alone for five seconds? The last thing I feel up to dealing with today is a busy body trollop."

She stops speaking abruptly, takes an accented step back, wounded. Fuck.

I say it out loud a few times (Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.) looking around where we're standing, the waiting room outside my office, but thankfully there are no witnesses. I head into my office, still speaking as if my string of profanity had been the springboard into sudden loquaciousness.

"I'm sorry, Kirsten. I don't know—it's been a really weird morning. I don't think of you like that." I do, actually, but it would be another one of those things best left alone. I might think she's too promiscuous, but she's still my best friend.

"Then why did you say it?" she demands, crossing her arms. Her feet are planted as far apart as the skirt will allow—woman power stance. I sigh, loosen my tie, blot my still-bleeding tongue on the kerchief. "Fuck if I know, Kirsten! I've been saying all kinds of unexpected words today. It's like, I don't know, I'm thinking directly out loud all of a sudden."

I flop down onto the couch in my office, fiddle with the bloodstained fabric in my hands, folding it so that most of the crimson isn't showing, so that a field of unsullied cloth waits for contamination. It reminds me of how one folds tissue still capable of one more use.

"Blood is more fun than snot." It pops out there before I can stop it. I spring up, look at her wildly. "FUCK!" I cry.

She blinks at me rather owlishly with her big eighties-blue-jean eyes. She's still standing with her feet apart and her arms crossed. Her patience unnerves me. "Was that an example, or something?"

"_That was it happening, Kirsten_!" I hiss.

"What, the thing about snot, or fuck?" she asks.

"Snot," I snap, losing patience. "It's like I start thinking about these random things and then I'm saying them out loud before I know it."

She smirks. "That's weird, Rob. Maybe you've picked up an alien virus."

"Fuck you. I'm going crazy over here." I groan and my tongue stings as I press it against the cloth in my fingers once more. I wonder if what I just said is true, if I'm seriously losing it. Instantly, I feel like I'm letting Dad down just by not being sure on this issue. Then, suddenly, the inner voice is back.

_I don't want to be him._

I snap out of it and find her staring at me strangely, and I sense how long the office has been silent. Her blond eyebrows are high, "Be who, Rob?"

_FLUMPthump FLUMPthump FLUMPthump_ My heart is in my ears and my breaths are roars inside my head. I stand. "Kirsten," I pant and I feel extremely lightheaded, "Something's wrong with me."

I hit the floor.


	2. Chapter 2: What About the Voices?

**Chapter 2: What About The Voices? **

I come to and find I'm hanging in the air: someone has my arms, and a man is holding my knees by standing between them. He grins at me through a scruffy beard, lifting his eyebrows over kind green eyes. "See?" he says to the room, cheery English accent, "told you he'd be olrigh'."

I am deposited on the leather couch of my office by the two men carrying me. I don't recognize either of them; must be clerks, far too below me to really matter. Kirsten swoops in, "Do you remember what happened?"

"I passed out," I say, trying to sit up because I don't want to lie down in front of people. My head swims, pounds in the back where it must have hit the floor. The man who'd had my arms—who I now realize is Uncle Peter snaps his fingers and the Englishman disappears with promises of an icepack.

"I'm fine," I say even as I learn I have to keep my eyes closed if I want my head to stop throbbing in time to my heart.

"You don't look fine, Rob," Kirsten says.

"You're pale," Uncle Peter's brow is furrowed.

"I'm fine," I snap.

"Well you're not getting through an entire meeting in this condition. I'll inform them you won't be attending."

"What? No! I'm fine!" I shout after him, but he's already power-walked out of the office. I find the clock and see that the meeting is beginning now. I sag into the cushions and press on my eyes, the pressure helps my pounding headache.

I am still in this pose when something soft and freezing encases the left side of my skull. I jump back to earth, where bells are ringing in my head, though much quieter with the ice pack held into place by the English secretary. His eyebrows are meeting in the middle in concern and green eyes search my face intently. But his wide lips have a quirk in one corner.

He allows me to take control of the ice pack. I sit up so that I have better access to the back of my head. My buttoned jacket restricts my reach but before I can even begin to realize a solution, he has deftly undone the two buttons for me and then Kirsten is arranging the pillows around me for support. The one thing I can't stand is being treated like a helpless creature.

"Stop it. Just," I lift elbows to demand space and both of them stop hovering so close. I punch the pillows into place and lean back into the soothing coolness of the ice pack.

"What's wrong with you, Rob?"

"I would like to know myself. It's been a weird couple of days."

"Maybe you should go to the doctor, get checked out." Kirsten suggests. I don't have the strength to argue. My head is pounding and my arms feel heavy. _I don't want to be him_, and I don't know what's going on. I agree to see a doctor. If I'm going crazy, I'd like to know it before I'm too far gone to understand why.

I get to my feet, sway and am caught by Kirsten, who motions to Uncle Peter's secretary, "Joe, get him down stairs. In fact, go with him to make sure he doesn't pass out again."

"Yes, ma'am," the scruffy secretary, Joe, says, hurrying forward to loop an arm under my shoulder and around my back to help me stand. I keep the icepack on my head. He supports me strongly and together we head for the doctor.

…..

The bump on my head is harmless, my assurances of as much proven by x-rays. The fainting is from pure exhaustion, from the flight and the funeral and no sleep. At least, that's what the doctor is telling me. I'm alone in a curtained cubical of the emergency room, having insisted that Joe the company lap dog stay in the waiting room.

"What about the—"I start, but I have no idea what to call it. I nearly said _voices_ but that's not what it is. It's not multiple voices. It's just one voice, my voice, the same one I've been hearing in my head while reading my entire life. It's just gotten out of control. _I don't want to be him._

I'm glad I stopped myself from saying the whole question _what about the voices_? That wouldn't have gone over well. At all. But I still said the whole first half of the question and the doctor is waiting expectantly. He's a little heavy, with an amiable smile and thick black hair, handsome enough if you went for that kind of thing. I prefer athleticism.

"What about the what?" he asks.

I wriggle uncomfortably on the exam table, answer with, "I just haven't been feeling myself."

"Since…?" The doctor prompts.

"The flight from Sydney after my father died."

Dr. Nigh hums with a pensive nod. He is no longer a doctor sparing a meager fifteen minutes per patient; he's looking like he's settling in for however long this will take. "Your secretary said you were behaving strangely right before you lost consciousness."

I nod, dry swallow. "Weird thoughts," I explain, adding, "Sometimes I actually say them out loud."

"Thoughts of….?"

I shrug, "Random things."

"Example?"

I scoff, shake my head, but end up telling him about calling my best friend a trollop, and that thing about snot, and by then I'm on a kind of a role and I just want to be cured of whatever the hell is wrong with me, so I confess about the thought, the loud one. "I don't want to be him."

"_Him_ being…" the doctor holds the last word out, fishing and I finish,

"Dad—I could never make him happy," The violent flinch that comes after this gives it away to the doctor that I never meant to say the last part.

Dr. Nigh hums again. A moment passes in silence. I think I shouldn't have said anything, but then he stands up—back to being a doctor in a hurry. "Well, I'm going to send our resident psychologist up to talk to you."

"Why?" I ask stomach dropping because I take this to mean I actually have gone crazy. My face heats up at the same time and I'm outraged. How dare they say I'm nuts? I could buy this hospital and turn it into a light bulb factory, those curly-q kind that save the planet.

This I say out loud. Goddamn it. I clamp a hand over my mouth and give him an imploring look. I never beg. The point of being as rich as I am is so that you never have to ask for anything. But at this point, I just want it to stop.

Dr. Nigh senses my anger and panic and holds up his hands in surrender, "Don't be alarmed. It's just that after the Prett/Brinker case, there's been new protocol put in place. We doctors are given a list of red flags to look out for. You just triggered three."

I frown. The Prett/Brinker case is nearly a year old by now, a messy legal dispute between two corporations that has gone on for a ridiculous amount of time, going all the way up to Supreme Court. It's why everyone who keeps important information in their heads pays for sub security training, dream defenses.

"Wait a minute, I've been trained," I tell him.

He shrugs. "They're like computer viruses, evolving with the defenses. They still could have gotten in and did something." He's talking about the dreamers, the illegal ones. A chill sweeps over me at the thought of strangers messing around in my head.

I don't have to ask him what it was in my explanations that could be considered red flags in identifying a dream-crime victim. I remember now, the boring lectures. _Be mindful of periods of time that are long, lonely, and monotone, such as a trip over long distances in a plane or train or boat; this is when you're most vulnerable, when they can get you and pull you under. Even a five minute cat-nap can be trouble._

The training had been in a college lecture hall, a hundred something suits crammed in the chairs, watching slides featuring the silver cased dreaming devices and the diagrams of the science behind it. I'd taken notes, everyone had. This was serious business. So it's ironic I forgot it now.

I blame the size of the classroom and the hurried, brief over-view nature of the training. I'd meant to sign up for the more extensive stuff, but hadn't gotten around to it. Why was that again? Dad's left lung had collapsed—no, that'd been a little closer to Valentine's Day and the dream training had been before that.

Oh, yeah, it was the New York offices, that employee bringing in a gun and shooting three people before leaping from the roof, spawning the need for counseling, hiring, re-assigning. Not to mention the legal ramifications from the families of the injured and the complete remodeling of the building's security and replacing the carpets in the places where the people had bled out. That'd been a nightmare. I'd had to cancel all kinds of things to deal with it.

All for one bastard with a fucking_ civil war musket_. Yeah. I blame him for me being in this hospital bed. If it wasn't for him, I'd have gotten proper training and this wouldn't have happened to me. Of course, had I actually paid attention to the tiny bit of training I'd been given, I still could have prevented it. Rule One: don't fall asleep in public without a trusty companion on sentinel duty.

I never really got in the habit of worrying about being alone on a plane. Hello, that's the entire point of having _a private jet_. The flight from Sydney had been the first commercial flight I'd taken in years. And I woke up from a nap on it suddenly haunted by the notion that I didn't want to be my father.

_I don't want to be him!_ I shout in my head. No. _I_ don't shout it. Suddenly, it feels alien. I swear, feel sick, and hear my heart in my ears again. I hear Kirsten's sarcastic voice. _Maybe you picked up an alien virus_. Well, maybe she was right.

"I flew commercial from Sydney. Slept on the plane." My voice sounds distant in my ears.

The doctor flares to life, asking instantly, "and you were alone? No friends or acquaintances onboard?"

"Joe!" I cry, I shout, in my eagerness. "My godfather's assistant was on the flight with me-JOE!" I yell it in the direction I know him to be in and a moment later he is opening the curtain; he must have been heading this way upon the first shout of his name.

"Yes?" He asks, looking alarmed and somewhat frightened, "What is it?"

"What happened on the plane?" I demand of him. He stands there, eyebrows up, eyes darting around, "I, er, I'm not sure what you mean, Mr. Fischer."

The doctor cuts in here, asking kindly, "Were the two of you seated together?" and we both talk at the same time, no, Joe was sitting a few seats back, and Joe asking, "Whot's this about?"

"Mr. Fischer says he slept during the flight. Did you happen to keep an eye on him?"

Joe flushes and looks away and says, "No-I. Well, there was this really handsome blond man who started chatting me up and he bought me a drink and we talked and then, well, we popped into the loo for a spell, and then I might have taken a little nap-"

"WHAT?" I fairly explode at him, nearly leaping off the table. "How could you leave me unguarded? You must know the protocol of sub security!"

Growing prickly, Joe's eyes flash but his voice remains steady, "I'm Mr. Browning's second secretary, not _your bodyguard_. No one told me I was to keep the baddies from you. I was only on orders to fly ahead and prepare Mr. Browning's-"

"Gentlemen," the doctor, tense and already with the nearest phone at his ear, cuts in here, "Can we save the argument for a later date?"

I'm thankful of the doctor for stopping us before we make a scene. I can hear my blood in my ears, and my fear is literally _painful_ in my gut, "I-"I start, but my voice nearly fails me so that I whisper, "Someone shared a dream with me."

The doctor is quick to reassure, "Stay calm, stay calm. I'm calling Dr. Evais right now. She'll bring her PASIV and she'll take a look at things."

"Take a look?" Joe and I ask in perfect unison.

"It happened yesterday, you say? Generally there are still traces—footprints. I have no idea what that means, but I hear Evais tell patients that all the time. She's trained in identifying them, the footprints criminals leave in people heads."

I feel cold again at his phrasing, _criminals in people's heads_.

_Criminals in my head_.


	3. Chapter 3: Traces of the Criminals

**Chapter 3: Traces of the Criminals**

They check me in and give me a private room. I glare at Joe and order him to wait in the hall, which he does reluctantly with his head down and his phone in hand. Not wanting to leave me alone (since doing just that got me here) he waits until only after a nurse comes to relieve him. She's old and tiny, must be ninety pounds dripping wet, five feet in heels. She gives me a bland smile and sits in the corner. We don't speak. I try not to wriggle too much in the silence.

I don't want to be him.

There is so much more to the thought than those six words. It's this entire complicated wad of emotion deep in my chest. I don't want to be him means I don't want the empire. It means I want to do something for myself.

It seems a little ridiculous to think that any of it came from anywhere else other than me. But it's suddenly there. And after I gave criminals opportunity to climb right into my subconscious. It can't be a coincidence. But wait a minute, dream crime is all about taking ideas, not about giving them.

What were they calling it? In the Prett/Brinker case, the thing that Brinker was accusing Prett of attempting? It wasn't extraction, though the case had brought the new threat of secret stealers to the public eye. No, it was the opposite—planting. Yeah, that's it, _inception_.

It hadn't worked. But there'd been enough to pack Prett away for fifteen years. Had the inception actually worked, Prett would have gotten life. There are new laws about it and everything; Falsifying True Inspiration. Seriously.

Dr. Evais is Hispanic but maybe also Asian, beautiful with a thick black braid down the back of her lab coat and dark narrow eyes, rich skin and a full figure. She's carrying a silver case that I recognize from the slide shows in the training lectures.

Dr. Evais introduces herself with a clear, only slightly Spanish-accented voice,

"You are the CEO of Fischer Morrow and recently took one of the longest flights in the world commercially with no bodyguards and woke up with strange thoughts."

I sigh, "Well when you put it like that it makes me sound incompetent. I—"

"I'm putting it how it is, Mr. Fischer. A man in your position ought to know better."

"I have a private jet, normally, but it was in need of repairs—I had an assistant with me, but he got distracted by a potential date and-listen, we were delivering my father's dead body to LA for his funeral. We weren't exactly thinking about sub security."

"And now it looks like they got you," she said, opening the silver case to reveal a lot of complicated pumps and gears and tubes. I manage to swallow the retort that comes right to mind and watch her fill the pumps inside the case with clear liquid from vials retrieved out of her deep pockets.

"This assistant," she asks, "Is he suffering any symptoms?"

"Besides anxiety and brushing up his resume? I have no idea."

"Is he here?"

"In the hall."

"We recommend he join us to help ensure your privacy."

"How is increasing the audience going to ensure my privacy?" I demand.

"He won't be sharing the dream, just watching over you as we sleep," she answers readily. "Mr. Fischer, I am a trained and licensed Dreamer. I'm not going to mess with anything. I'm an observer only," she says and motions to the tiny nurse, "Miranda here is bearing witness that you are allowing me inside your head. She will remain in the room throughout the entire procedure and ensure that I am the only person to connect to the PASIV while you are plugged in."

She says all of this with the practiced ease of a memorized speech as she fills the dream box with dreaming serum. "As previously mentioned, I do insist you call in your secretary for further reassurances."

I do so, reluctantly-but only because I know that if I don't, Uncle Peter will want to know why I didn't once he hears about all of this. Within moments, Joe slips back in to the room with his eyes searching all corners,

"Right, whot's going on?" he demands of the room in general but with his eyes locked on me. His is the tone of a man whose sole purpose is to take notes, but who missed the first half of the lecture and needs a recount pronto. I know it's because by now he's gotten in touch with Uncle Peter and has received marching orders. _Do. Not. Take. Your. Eyes. Off. Him. I don't care if Mick Jagger is there with his mouth on your cock, you got that?_

No one really gives him an answer and I motion for him to sit in the corner without a word. He looks around at Evais and Miranda, winking at the small nurse, and taking a seat next to her. I see his eyes land on the PASIV and he perks up, frowns at me, "Whot's this?"

Again, I do not answer him and now that Dr. Evais is satisfied that I have an ally, she explains to him, "I'm just going to navigate around in Mr. Fischer's sub conscious and see if I can't identify any traces of the criminals."

"Traces," I repeat, as Joe shifts around in his uncomfortable chair in the corner, pulling out his cell phone, no doubt to inform Uncle Peter of these developments right away, "like footprints?"'

"Kinda," she says, "You see, even though it's a dream you were having, they are the ones that build the dream. The ones that are real professionals mimic your imagination—even your memory—perfectly, but often enough, they're just bozos with a new toy to play with and end up putting in an element or two that doesn't really belong. That's how we identify them."

Once finished, she punches numbers into a keypad and a panel lights up with numbers like a score board, a countdown.01: she grabs a tube and pulls, it unwinds like a seat belt, with the same hiss and everything. She tears a new needle out of an airtight plastic seal. A moment later, she has the dreaming device attached to my wrist.

"That says an hour," I say, pointing at the timer. "I remember the Excited Brain Function Principle. Time goes more slowly in a dream than in life—surely just five minutes would do the trick?"

She smiles, "Not if I see everything I need to see, Mr. Fischer. I shift through a lot of subconscious before I can even hope to know what belongs and what doesn't. I'll be down there for twelve hours to start with, and then we'll go from there. Frankly, by the time I'm done with you, I'll know you better than you know yourself."

This is extremely discomforting. She holds up her hands, "I'm sworn under a patient confidentiality vow, Mr. Fischer, and I take it very seriously. You can still refuse to allow me access to your mind. However, if you do, there is really no hope of ever knowing what it is they took from you."

"What if," I start and then continue before I can talk myself out of it, "What if they didn't take something, but—left something?"

There is a long pause in which Joe looks up from his blackberry and Dr. Evais studies me with a smirk, "You're talking about Inception?"

I nod. She laughs, shakes her head, "It's a myth, Mr. Fischer. They can try to put ideas in your head all day long—people give each other ideas every day—but we will always know where we got it. Genesis Tracks are clear and simple; the brain never has a problem tracing them.

"And just as often as we get an idea, we talk ourselves out of it. The fact is, situations similar to the Prett/Brinker case are as far as inception is ever going to get—The idea that Prett put in Brinker's head was gone as quickly as an idea to grow a mustache or skip lunch for the day and Brinker was able to trace where the idea came from. His brain recognized it as alien."

Her words are reassuring me. Kinda. I want to believe her, but if I do it means that the fact that I'm still thinking how I don't want to be my father, loudly and on repeat, means that I really do feel this way, and to such an extent that I'm driving myself crazy with it. I glance over at Joe and see that he is studying me intently, a deep burrow in his forehead.

Feeling weird, like I'm on display in a freak show, I shoot him a warning look to cut it out. He does, clearing his throat and returning to his blackberry, texting away on the keyboard at an impressive speed. He stops only to participate in signing the witness forms Dr. Evais hands him and Miranda.

After getting clearly stated permission from me, she puts another tube in her wrist and softly delivers an order for me to lie back and relax. She winks when I do, and presses a button in the center of the contraption. There's a whir, then a sound like breathing as the pumps in the machine start up. I feel the clear liquid course into my veins, icy cold, and I see Joe smiling at me, and then I slip over the edge into sleep.


	4. Chapter 4: A Train Not On Its Tracks

**Chapter 4: A Train Not On It's Tracks**

I wake up in the hospital room. That little nurse, Miranda, Dr. Evais, and Joe are looking at me expectantly. Miranda has gotten a bed tray from somewhere, using it as a desk where she and Joe are filling out paper work. I foresee that I will be signing things—waving my right to sue, blah blah blah.

Dr. Evais is already taking the needles from our arms, dropping them in the red waste bin and packing up. She gives me a smile with high eyebrows when I meet her eye and says, "Well, that was interesting."

I blush. What in the hell did she see? Apparently, I ask that out loud. She and Joe laugh, and she busies herself with popping the pumps out of the machine and taking them over to the sink to rinse them out. "Well, I started my observation in childhood development. The brain retains _so much more_ of that than we are conscious of. It's absolutely fascinating, always my favorite part."

I frown and she continues, "Good news is that you had a standard, healthy development. No oral fixations, anal retentiveness, or Oedipus complexes."

I snort, "I could have told you that."

She washes her hands, "You had a beautiful childhood, by the way."

_Until I was eleven._

Again. Out loud. Son of bitch. She nods, giving me a heavy sympathetic look that I refuse to acknowledge. She continues, lightening the mood considerably, "Then I moved onto your love life." She jumps her eyebrows at me and I know that this is what she'd been talking about, the interesting bit.

"Jesus," I murmur, "Sorry. I bet you'd have liked a warning about Sophomore year at Stanford."

She covers her eyes dramatically, to which I can't help but laugh and apologize. Joe, smiling broadly, speaks up though his pen doesn't stop moving on the form, "Oooh, please let us in on that, Mr. Fischer." His eyebrows are cocked and his smile devilish. Miranda chuckles.

I shoot Joe another warning look, mumble something about inappropriate. Dr. Evais waves a hand, "I've seen _far_ worse, trust me. It just surprised me—I didn't pick up on it before going under."

"Most women don't notice," I confess. "My best friend, Kirsten, tells me that it's because of my eyes. No woman wants to look into my eyes and think there's no way I'm interested in her." At this Dr. Evais has that look that means, _yes, exactly_! A glance at Miranda shows me pretty much the same thing.

I notice they're both single and give them an apologetic smile, half a shrug. What can you do? Evais tactfully continues with her job, "Anyway, after that I checked out your imagination, books you read, movies, greatest fears—spooky stuff, my least favorite part. Then I looked at your relationship with your father."

Here she frowns in a way that makes both me and Joe sit up. _I don't want to be him_. I wait for her to say it, there's something growing rampant down there, a kind of mold that doesn't belong. Instead she says, "I _might_ have found a handful of things that don't belong—they seemed random, but sometimes that happens even when they belong. Our minds link the craziest things together sometimes. I can't be sure until I've looked around further."

"What kinds of things did you find?"

She sighs, dismisses Miranda who goes quietly. I dismiss Joe, who begins a protest that I cut off with a sharp repeat of my command. He goes with his head down. Once we're alone she asks, "A train not on its tracks?" as if trying to jog my memory. At this, I can only stare blankly, frowning, with a shrug. I've only been on a train maybe twice in my life? So, yeah, probably not mine.

The thought excites me, not in a good way—in the way a dog picks up the scent of something it wants to rip apart with his teeth. The presence of footprints means that I have been extracted (or maybe incepted, though unlikely—_I don't want to be him_) and if that's the case, whoever it is will be caught and thrown in prison. Period.

"What else?" I ask. She shakes her head, suddenly deciding not to divulge more until she has a stronger handle on it all. She wheels the food tray over and hands me a pen.

"I need to look again. We'll schedule appointments at my office, as soon as possible."

I nod eagerly. She points to where I need to sign. I take several minutes to actually read all the print on the pages. Then I sign them. She packs the papers up with the rest of the device until all she is holding is a tidy silver briefcase and says goodbye.

….

"You're not my assistant," I say to Joe when he slides into the car. It is the next morning. I'm on my way to my appointment with Evais. Joe settles into his seat with a frown, "No, I'm not. I'm to be Browning's eyes."

"Of course you are," I say before I realize.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he asks. I don't answer, chewing the insides of my cheeks to keep from saying, _because I think Peter is untrustworthy enough to use spies._ Joe drops it, and we ride in silence.

Dr. Evais' office is small, private practice. Impressionist art hangs on the walls—fuzzy pictures like dreams. A flat screen television on the wall is playing the global news. I hear them mention dad's name once before I am called back to the exam room. The world wants to mourn the passing of a corporal giant, but it's going over as just another headline for the company. He was never personal enough to be more than a letterhead.

The carpet is checkered blues and the matching chairs in the waiting room are comfortable looking, but I don't have to sit down. Kirsten, or Joe, or whoever it fell to, has scheduled me as the first possible patient because everybody knows I hate waiting. I have arrived right on time, which seems an hour or so earlier than the yawning receptionist would have liked. She's on autopilot, empty, "No light on upstairs."

Joe snorts, chokes back his laughter. Her response to my statement is reasonably confused, and her brown eyes even flit up to the ceiling as if to point out that there is no upstairs in this squat little building. I smile tightly, and after explaining that I am there for the 8:00 appointment, and that I don't want to be him, I am given another quizzical look and directions so that I can find my own way to the proper examination room.

"I'll just inform Dr. Evais of your arrival," she says, picking up the phone.

"Thank you," I say with a heavy sigh. I point to a chair out here in the waiting room, intending for Joe to take it like an obedient dog, but he shakes his head,

"No," he says simply, "I'm under strict orders to keep you in my sights at all times. Browning doesn't trust dreamers."

I groan and Joe ignores the clear sign that he is unwelcome and follows me.

The door leading into the inner offices is like a bedroom door. I almost feel like I am snooping around a stranger's house as I navigate the narrow hallway carpeted in the same blue checkers, decorated with more of those fuzzy dream pictures, accented with a large green plant here, a small bamboo thing there. I pass two doors; each one has a plastic sign stuck to it identifying them as bathrooms. The next door is propped open, revealing a brightly lit room with a couch, an armchair, and more potted plants. There's a camera set up on a tripod, angled to record all that happens in the room.

Joe takes a chair in the corner. I take a seat on the couch and look at the camera lens. I don't like it being there. It's weird, perverted somehow. "Porno," I say aloud. Jesus Christ. Joe laughs openly, bending forward with a smile that splits his face and shows me all his teeth. It's the kind of laugh that makes anyone who hears it want to laugh, too.

Despite myself, I'm chortling along with him. After a minute, our laughter dies down and silence returns. I close my eyes, suddenly feeling exhausted. I didn't sleep any last night either, no surprise, and _I don't want to be him_. The building is so quite that I can hear the muted sounds of the television down the hall, the receptionist's clipping keyboard, the sound of the air conditioner, and, shortly, the noise of a suit and heels moving quickly over carpet.

Dr. Evais doesn't formally announce her presence when she finds me lying with my eyes closed. Instead, she just takes an audible breath, a kind of _excellent, let's get this thing started_. I lift my eyelids at the snap of a clipboard. She has freed a pen from the clasp, smiles at me as she hands it over.

"How are you, Mr. Fischer?"

I look at all the same papers as yesterday. The only thing different is the date and the time permitted. I am disappointed to see the session will not be any longer. I hand the clipboard to Joe as I answer, "Just an hour? I could've used the sleep, haven't honestly slept since Dad died."

Normally I am never so personal and forthcoming with stuff like that, but other people are and it could have passed as idle conversation except Dr. Evais already knows me better than that. She smiles softly, knowingly, and I swallow. Weird to have someone know you so well without having any real conversations with them. She'd warned me that she would know me better than I knew myself. I thought she was kidding, but damn.

She laughs.

"Did I say that out loud?" I ask.

I get a nod from her and Joe as she prepares the PASIV. I laugh embarrassed. "See that's what frightens me most," I say, "I don't understand why I can't control my inner monologue anymore—that's not a normal side effect to extraction. That means they messed me up. They wrecked me. Tore my mind. Broke me—" I bite my tongue to stop a list of synonyms that could go on all day.

"Torn," Joe repeats, more to himself, like it's a good song lyric. No one contradicts me. Instead, she injects the needle and asks me to get comfortable.

"Okay, so this will be just another standard observation. I'll follow up on the possible anomalies I detected in our last session and we'll see from there."

"The train without tracks?" I ask. Joe perks up with interest. She nods, "and other things."

I don't get a chance to ask about the other things because she presses the button and, with ice shooting into my arm, I go to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5: My Enemies Are Clever

**Chapter 5: My Enemies Are Clever**

When I wake up, she looks much more confident, like a hunting dog triumphantly returned with a kill. She jumps her eyebrows. "They left stuff behind alright."

"What did you find?"

She looks over at Joe and waves a hand, but under orders from Uncle Peter, he wouldn't go even if I told him to. After a short debate that I end with "Whatever, he'll hear about it eventually," she answers, "Well, there's the train off its tracks, a woman, a couple of small children, a broken champagne glass, white curtains, blood stains, and a locked bedside safe."

I blink. Joe makes a choking noise that turns out to be a chuckle that he adds a shrug to. "Sorry."

"Yeah, none of that makes any sense," I agree with Joe's bemused confusion.

"It seems random to us because it is just the crumbs left over, but it was all part of a very elaborate dream."

"I don't even remember having a dream on the plane."

"Of course not. You don't remember it because they weren't your regular bozos after all. You see, when we dream naturally, it is just our brains organizing thoughts it didn't make room for during the day.

"These dreamers knew enough to make the dream-setting personal so that your brain knew exactly where to file the information. It all happened so easily that it didn't even make for a dream vivid enough to remember when you woke."

I smile. It's satisfying to learn that my enemies are clever. Worthy opponents will make justice sweeter.

"The most interesting part is the depth it reaches."

"Depth?"

"I've never encountered anything like it, and I believe it's the cause of your condition."

I sit up. "Yes?"

"I found each element buried at different depths—in fact I almost didn't even spot the woman. I was as deep as I dared to go, but then the children led me further in...Mr. Fischer, I believe your first thought was accurate after all. I think they may have tried Inception on you. And I think they thought that if they could just go deep enough the idea would take root, but what they didn't think of was the hole left in the hedge they plowed through."

"You're saying they just—what? Drilled too deep? Did it work?"

"You tell me. Can you trace the origin of any thought to someone else?"

I take a quiet minute to trace my thoughts. I pounce on the big one, the dangerous one. I wrestle it down and find where it came from. Close behind the repetitive notion is how boring work usually is (with the exception of that musket fiasco) how selfish I know I am for having so much money sitting in the bank when so many other people need it more, and then there's what Dad said when he died. _Disappointed_...

I still haven't worked out what the jumbled syllables were before that, but the cold fact is I didn't make him proud. Maybe because I could never fill his shoes. Or maybe because I tried. Maybe Dad knew how much of a bastard he was, maybe he hoped I'd be better...now there's a thought...

I shake my head to get back on track. "Nothing that wasn't a long time coming, I guess..."

She nods in a way that says she understands completely. It releases the building pressure I felt at almost having to explain myself. I will never get use to the idea of her knowing me that well after only two days.

It occurs to me that her papers aren't good enough. She can expect my lawyers tomorrow with contracts and legal gags and anything else we can think of to make sure she doesn't become an enemy.

"I look forward to the luncheon, if you pay," she chuckles, because I've vocalized this plan. Damn it to hell. Joe is grinning amusedly in the corner. She tactfully ignores my swear.

"Then it seems that whatever business strategy they were trying to plant in your head failed, and since they bulldozed straight down to—well, further than I was willing to chase the tracks—it's safe to assume they left a hole in the layers of your subconscious that—" she cuts off, sighs, and tries a different angle to explain it. "Let's look at it this way. As you've admitted, you can't control what you do or do not say."

"Yes."

"The simplest way to explain it would be to say they tore through your filtering system, and now things can get through."

I blink rapidly. It's one thing to have suspicions and fears—it's completely different having it confirmed. I'm damaged.

"No you're not," she says, effectively proving my point. She smiles somewhat consolingly. "It's not a death sentence, Mr. Fischer. In fact, it could go away. The tear _might_ repair itself. I have never seen this kind of damage before, honestly—and I admit the intrigue of what happened down there is going to keep me up for weeks—but it's safe to assume you gave some real professionals a run for their money, and in turn they were less kind to your delicate make-up than they would have been otherwise."

"Delicate make-up?" I repeat, insulted. It stung when it wasn't meant to sting, but coming from someone who knows me better than myself, it's emasculating to hear myself described as _delicate_.

"Yes," she says defensively like yesterday when I scorned her choice of words. Dr. Eaivis, I am learning, is a woman who will take back nothing, and means exactly what she says. "You're psychological make-up is more delicate than most due to your childhood and lifestyle. You've less to harden or burden you—_yes, you do_," she raises her voice when I begin to protest about having my own slice of Life Is Unfair Pie. "You've gotten one or two really hard blows, true, but little-to-no regular stings. It makes you, within the boundaries of one weak metaphor: a flower missing one or two petals while the rest of us are crushed into the dirt."

I smirk. She grins and removes her needle, signaling that I may remove mine. I cringe as I do so, more for the idea of it than any physical pain. I've never liked needles.

"So, they went in, they _abused my flower_," all three of us smirk, "then what? How do we identify them? How will retribution be reached?"

"There is no way for me to identify them just yet. You're best hope is to check airport security footage and the like, open up an investigation. When the proper authorities catch someone, I can do my little tricks to connect them to any trains, that woman, or small children."

"I'll do that right now—" I stand. It's too soon. The room tilts a little. She stands more slowly and rests a hand on my arm. "Don't over tax yourself just yet, Mr. Fischer. It wouldn't hurt to close yourself off from the world for a day or two, sit in the dark, give your mind time to recuperate before you bombard it with all the new the things in your life. I know it's a hectic time, but if you want a chance to heal..."

I swallow, nod. "I'm going home. But what if I can't? Heal I mean?"

"Worst case scenario? You join the percentage of human beings who simply do not think before they speak. You, and those in your life, will learn how to adjust to it, and that will be that."

She says it like it's no big deal. _That will be that_. It's never as simple as _that_.


	6. Chapter 6: My Father's Charming Advice

**Chapter 6: My Father's Charming Advice**

Kirsten has spent the entire day with the detectives, after I filed my report. From here in bed at my apartment, I get regular updates by iPhone.

They have leads, it's all very promising. Uncle Peter is taking action against Saito, since it was most definitely him behind it. I am to do nothing but lie here with the ocean sparkling blue outside my windows, and visualize stiches sewing up tears in my mind. No one has told me to do this, but just laying here feels like a waste of time and a lot of people, entire nations, practice meditation, so there has to be something legit to the practice.

Between mental sewing practice and accidental naps, I try to face that big idea, which now has a face like a beast unleashed from deep within, a wild dog that crawled through the plowed hedge. _I don't want to be him_.

I really don't. It's possible I've never wanted it.

I understand the poetry and the honor and pride that traditionally comes to every man for being their father's son through-and-through, and somewhere along the way I was enchanted with that notion, bewitched into trading my future for a repeat of his life...and had those dream-shits stayed out of my head I could have died happily as Fischer Jr.

Now I can't help but wonder what else I can do. There is no denying the freedom I have now that it's all mine; now that I don't have a father to make proud.

Or try to make proud. Disappointed. I failed and there's no re-test.

He's not on a cloud somewhere looking down at me, or in a fire pit somewhere, looking up, (though that one is more likely). He just _isn't_ anymore. At least, I _think_.

Fuck, they didn't just let loose the dogs, now there's a rabid bear somewhere in there that isn't happy with Maurice's atheist teachings.

But that's a different battle. Right now, my immediate happiness, health, and lifestyle are at jeopardy. I feel like I'm sixteen all over again. Only this time I'm not sexually confused about who I am. It's emotional. Is it money that will make me happy? Power? Because that's all Maurice needed; money, power, and sex. Is that all I need?

_I don't want to be him_.

Someone knocks on my bedroom door.

I have visitors. Uncle Peter with his entourage of suits: his assistant, his assistant's assistant, the always-grinning Joe, and today's client, who will by sunset give Fischer Morrow anything we want, another victim to Uncle Peter's game. Peter never does business in an office if he can help it; always on a golf course or a spa or over mouthwatering gourmet food—or, if occasion calls for it, family emergency.

I recognize that he is spinning this entire embarrassing trip to my house to his advantage, using me as I've been used my entire life: the adorable little boy that proves the ruthless business man has a heart. This actually isn't the first time I've met clients from a sickbed.

"Dad only showed affection for me in front of clients," I say. Fuck my entire life.

My bloop has discredited Uncle Peter's explanations for me being here. (He has, of course, told the client my original diagnosis of exhaustion, and has no doubt won sympathy with a story of how I'm taking Dad's death hard. Then the first words out of my mouth are proof that no such relationship existed.)

Uncle Peter does what he can to save it. The client looks uncomfortable. The two assistants are frozen, waiting for subtle orders to fake some other kind of emergency and get the client away from me—but Uncle Peter adopts an appropriately sympathetic face and claps me on the shoulder with his best affectionate grimace, "I know, Robert, and I'm sorry. But it was his loss though, eh? And you've always had _me_," there it is, the new spin, the lie: Uncle Peter was the better man. He flashes a smile and squeezes my shoulder. "Isn't that right?"

"Yup," I say with a smile like I mean it. I actually do mean it to a point. Two part-time father-figures sort of equal one real one. I change the subject before I do the new math, now minus one.

"Thanks for coming, you all," I say diplomatically, "Mr. Brandon, I'm sorry to make you come all the way down here in the middle of your golf game."

"Not a problem. Glad to see you're all right."

"Thank you."

"Robert, I've spoken with your doctor," in his face I see that he has heard the details of my PASIV session, that I've been compromised, and his eyes promise that it's being taken care of. "He said a few days of rest and relaxation is what you need." It's not really the option he's pretending it is. We can't have me sticking around the office if I'm going to blurt out the truth all the time. "Now Mandy's all set to arrange everything, I'll leave her with you to sort it out. Mr. Brandon, let's get back to that eighteenth hole, shall we?"

As Uncle Peter leaves with the client, I smile weakly at Mandy, his personal assistant, a woman his age in a modest pants suit, hiding behind thick glasses. Beside her is Joe, looking happy to be here.

"Kirsten's going to have to get help too." I say thoughtfully.

Mandy nods and sighs. "We _were_ interviewing candidates today," she says rather tersely, "but no time for that now."

"Evais told you what's really wrong with me?"

She nods curtly. "It's all getting taken care of, don't fret. And Pete wasn't lying, you do need some rest." She pulls out her blackberry. "Now which mansion would you prefer to rest in? Beach or country?"

I sigh, wave a hand. "Neither, I'll take the yacht." I don't really care, but at least out on the ocean there will be less chance of visitors.

"Ooh, the _Abigail_, right?" Joe says enthusiastically, naming the yacht, "I haven't seen that yet."

I lower my eyebrows. "No."

Mandy shrugs, "Well you can't go out there alone with your mind unraveling, Robert!"

"What about Kirsten?" I ask rather desperately.

"She's you're only assistant, we need her here as your liaison until you get back. Eames will just make sure you don't sink the boat or something."

Joe is standing with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face as if he enjoys nothing more than being assigned to people like a seeing-eye dog. I roll my eyes. The last thing I want tagging along on my vacation is a spy as if I can't be trusted with business secrets anymore.

The blackberry buzzes and she sighs. "Okay—Eames, sort this. Pete needs me."

"Right-o," Joe says promptly.

I snort rather playfully at her. "Bumping me off down the line? Gee, thanks Aunt Mandy."

I call her that because she's been Uncle Peter's secretary since before I was born. I've asked before why he never got a new one every year like dad, and Uncle Peter said she was too brilliant to trade in, like she was a classic car or something. It's the only evidence of true loyalty in the entire company I think.

"Well, I can't do everything dear, and you're a lot of trouble." She smiles and winks. "That's what he's here for."

"You're leaving him in safe hands," Joe assures. "We'll get it sorted."

The door closes behind Mandy, and Joe heads right for my closet, pulling out my suitcase and starting the packing process. I close my eyes, sinking back into the pillows. But after a moment, I peek through my eyelids at Eames as he sorts through my hanging shirts, considering each one like he's shopping. His shoulders are slanted and his head is down like he's used to staying quiet and out of the way.

He picks a few and I shut my eyes as he turns back towards me to pack them. He starts to whistle and I smile. It's a pleasant sound, a melody filled with long wavering notes.

I haven't had a man for an assistant in years—haven't been allowed after being caught with my last one, Marcus, which resulted in his termination and Dad hiring Kirsten to replace him without my consent. Dad was _so_ angry. Not because of the gay thing. It was the poor display of work ethic. He'd ranted and raved, finally getting to his point with a sharp finger in my chest,

_We do not fuck the help._

Joe laughs and that's when I realize I said that out loud. I put my red face in my hands with a swear and then an apology. "I was-uh. I was just remembering my father's charming advice."

Joe is still chortling, "Charming indeed."

"I really-"I start and sit up properly to achieve more authority, "Listen, thanks, but I don't need you're company. In fact-considering the circumstances-I'm better on my own."

Joe didn't even pause in his packing or look up, "Oh, I'm not bunking off that easily."

"Really," I insist, "it'll be more comfortable if you stay behind."

"I'm not afraid of a little honesty here or there," Joe said, looking up with a grin, "Are you?"

I don't answer and he winks, heads for my bathroom for the toiletries. I notice he has a natural sway in his hips as he goes. I sigh, call after him, "Maybe _I'd_ be more comfortable on my own."

"If that's truly the case, I'm sorry," Joe calls back sincerely, "Because I have to go with you. I'm spying for the Board, remember?"

"No one ever said you were spying for the Board."

"Oh, but you're too smart to need it said, aren't you?"

"What's there for them to learn?" I demand, "I'm on their side!"

"True, but you're also the soul owner of the entire empire," Joe said, striding back into the room with black toiletry bag in hand. "They want me around to hear it if you slip up and reveal your plans. If they don't like them, they'll have time to form a preemptive strike against you."

"Perfect," I mumble. He snorts and nods. I watch him cram the black bag into the suitcase. I realize he'd have been going through my drawers in there and wonder if he saw the condoms and lube, and if so, if he packed them.

A vacation for rest and mental health shouldn't require such preparations, but I can't help but feel like it'd be reckless to leave them behind. Not when Joe is naturally so flirty, and I'm going to be so bored. Not when we'll be on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with no way to acquire such products quickly.

I say none of this aloud. Thank god. But Joe sees me looking at the bag and winks, "I don't think I left anything out, sir."

I feel heat on my cheeks, and roll my eyes on principle, looking away. Joe starts his whistling again and I trap my lips between my teeth to keep my thoughts to myself, but stand and start to pack a second bag.

There's a list of books on my Kindle that I've been meaning to read, so that's the first thing to go in. Next goes my laptop and cell phone-and that's it. I have nothing else outside the realm of work to call a hobby.

"No life," I say aloud. Joe turns, snickers. "Whot's that?"

"I said I don't have a life!" I snap. I gesture angrily at the suitcase. "On a vacation from work, I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do all day."

Joe comes over to take a look at the bag of entertainment and makes a noise of consent in the back of his throat. I sigh. I don't want to be Dad, but what the hell else is there to be?

Joe turns and plucks something off a shelf, and wriggles it in front of my face, loose wires dancing. It's an iPod I forgot I had. Usually I don't even listen to it, but Kirsten's always downloading all these songs for me that she says I have to hear. I work better in silence, though, and told her I lost it a while ago.

"Music!" I cry gratefully. I'm that desperate not to get bored this weekend. Maybe by then I'll be cured. I turn it on and scroll through the song bank-thousands of songs I recognize, even more I don't. Maybe I can sink a few days into just listening to every song at least once. My eye catches an album I actually downloaded myself, and it gives me an idea.

I drop the iPod into the bag, go to the closet and climb onto the step ladder in the back so that I can reach the impossibly high shelf. I find dust for the first time in my life and enjoy wiping it off the black leather casing. I laugh happily.

"Lost treasure."

Joe is smiling, and interested to see what I've drug out. I drop it on the bed and pop the latches. Inside is a lonely, neglected violin. Just the smell takes me back to my miserable years as a classical nerd.

"Oh, you play?"

"Not in years. I kept it because I said I wouldn't forget-but," I pluck the out of tune strings and cringe. "Plenty of time to relearn if I have to, I guess."

"Oh, lord," Joe says, clapping a hand to his face. "Stuck at sea with a dying cat; I might bunk off after all."


	7. Chapter 7: Out of Balance

**Chapter 7: Out of Balance**

I hate leaving the moment I'm put in charge of everything. It's like I'm hiding from the responsibility or something. But with Kirsten acting as my proxy, I'll be running my new business over phone, text, and e-mail, things that she can edit my uncontrolled, inappropriate thoughts out of and thusly keep it under wraps that I've gone crazy.

Once I'm onboard, I give my Captain orders to take us to Hawaii, and I watch the coast fade away. Then, when we're out to sea so far I can't see land anymore, I lock myself in my room and occupy myself with tuning my violin.

I rosin my bow, taking my time because god knows how long I'll be in hiding and there is no reason to rush. My tuner gives me an A, and I do my best to match it with the A string. I've always had an ear for pitch and it doesn't take long. I secure the other three strings into their proper pitch with the harmony of fifths, and then I try a scale.

My fingers slip, the notes jumble, and I swear. But I like holding the instrument again. Learning was hard, and I had worked at it until I was good at it. That is something I have always been proud of. But now I can't finish one scale and it pisses me off.

"Can't finish a scale, can't run a business…" I realize I'm talking out loud and scoff, laugh, "Can't think with my goddamn mouth closed."

I lift the violin again, but before my bow touches the strings, I hear a sound muffled through the wall-a loud retch. Alarmed, I whirl to look toward the bathroom. A second retch is louder and turned into a prayer. "-Oooh, God help me."

My violin goes back into the case and I step out of my room and knock on the bathroom door. It isn't latched and swings open. Eames is on his knees in front of the toilet, green. "You look pretty," I say.

He groans. "I'm dying."

"Sea sick," I announce incredulously. "We're on a yacht. How can you even feel the ocean?"

"I've always been delicate," he moans.

I smirk, "Here."

From the medicine cabinet, I pull a box of patches and tear it open. "Put these on."

His response is another retch, face deep in the bowl, and my nose wrinkles as I glance over the directions. "It says up to three behind each ear. Try it."

Eames just moans. I sigh and squat beside him, lift his heavy head with one hand under his scruffy jaw. "Come on, Pitiful," I coax.

His cheek is warm and soft against my hand, and his ear is cold against my fingers from its contact with the porcelain seat. His other ear slowly turns red with a blush as I carefully press the first patch into place. He sits up, swaying and swallowing a belch. "You don't have to—"

"Turn," I say, even as I turn his face to access his other ear. I stick the second patch there and my fingers linger when my eye accidentally catches his. The color pulls me in; a soft green flecked with brown and gold. I've always loved hazel eyes, so much more interesting than boring blue.

"You're blue eyes are _far_ from boring, darling," he says weakly. I snatch my hands back but my embarrassment of having accidentally shared another private thought is saved by a flash of green in his face and another dive for the bowl.

I let him get it out of his system, while I regain my composure. When he nestles his head on the seat with more moans, I get back to my feet, blood rushing in pins and needles to my toes, and snap my fingers. "Come with me."

He laboriously gets to his feet with my help, a hand in each arm pit. He is a solid man and it takes all my strength. Once he's upright, he leans on me, arm draped around my shoulders. The warm sensation of it puts a breathy laugh on my lips.

"Are we going to lie down now?" he slurs, swallowing wetly. His stumbling steps make it impossible for me to walk a straight line; his weight throws me more than once into the wall and door frames.

"Nope," my voice is slightly strained from the exertion of fighting his disoriented steering. "The engine room."

"Engine-whot for?"

"Just walk in a straight line, would you?"

The small stair case turns out to be dangerous. It is too narrow for us to descend side by side, so I let him go first, and end up having to take fistfuls of his jacket to keep him from pitching forward even as he grips the polished rails with white knuckles.

"Even ground and no broken neck, good," I say with relief once we're on the bottom most level. It is loud down here, where the engines hum their songs. The crew members salute me with smiles and I nod silently at them as I lead Eames to the stern window.

"I need to lie down, I'm sick," he begs.

"You're not sick," I remind him. "You're just out of balance. Look out there," I say, pointing at the horizon behind the boat. "Focus on that, how level it is? Take deep breaths, come on."

I coach him until he is breathing properly. He shakes his head and sways into the wall. "I'm going to be _ill_-"

"Could someone get me a bucket?" I call. My wish is granted instantly, and Eames is handed a small trash bin. I move behind him to give him an unobstructed view of the horizon and I start to rub his shoulders. "You have to find your sea legs. Now, relax your body. Stop fighting the motion."

He hurls into the bin. A crew member suggests the patches.

"We have them thank you, Leslie."

Once Eames is finished filling the bin, he looks somewhat desperately out of the window and returns to his deep breathing. "Make it _stop_," he moans. "Just make it stop."

"It's the ocean, it isn't going to stop for you." I say with a laugh.

"Well it _should_," he croaks. I smile at that and squeeze his thick shoulders. "Roll your shoulders. Loosen up, come on."

He tries impatiently, but the effect is like winding a little puking doll. He sticks his head into the bin and the retch is oddly muted. I rub his back and shoulders. A stewardess arrives with a soothing ginger drink.

I take it with a soft thank you, and drag Eames out of the bin.

He wipes his mouth. "Bloody hell, I wasn't born with sea legs!" he groans. "I need land!"

I shake my head and scratch my eyebrow. "Fine. You're too sick right now. We'll try this later. Here take this. Drink it."

"Whot is it?"

"Don't ask questions. Just drink it and then you can go to sleep. Sometimes a nap helps."

"Promise?"

"You're such a baby."

"Kiss my arse."

"Love to," I say before clamping my jaw shut. He isn't sick enough not to laugh and lift and eyebrow. "Ooh, darling, do you want to take a nap with me?"

I flush and shove him up each step with a hand on each shoulder blade. At the top of the stairs, he downs the entire glass of medicated beverage in an impressive gulp and sits it on the nearest surface with a wholly unattractive rumble of a belch. "Where's me bin?" he asks quickly, alarmed.

It's in his arms. He hugs up to it, but doesn't need it after all. He stops at his door, turning, and my forward motion crashes me into him. The plastic bin acts like a bumper, but he gets it out of the way quickly enough, and suddenly we are standing very close.

"So?" he asks. He is still pale, and swaying in opposition to the gentle rock of the boat. I smile and roll my lips. His eyes are on them, wanting them. I reach behind him and turn the knob. "You're breath stinks."

He stumbles inside with an embarrassed kind of half-laugh as he collapses on the small bunk. "Yes, I am not at the top of my game, I fear."

"You will be tomorrow," I assure as I follow him in and take the bin from him to help him get situated. "You just need to sleep until you're body adjusts—or the meds kick in."

"Leave me patches please," he slurs, eyes closed, searching for sleep. I drop the box in the floor next to the bin. "Get well soon."

"Thank you, dear."


	8. Chapter 8: I'll Be Better Than Him

**Chapter 8: I'll Be Better Than Him**

Eames has been asleep for hours, and I have mastered the warm up scale and sorted out all the little tunes like Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star and Row, Row, Row Your Boat by ear. I feel good, the music is coming back to me faster than I expected, and I find it is just what I needed, the reminder that I am a natural at difficult things. It means I can do anything I want, anything at all. It is a daunting thought, but somehow strangely, vastly reassuring.

I don't want to be him. And maybe I don't have to be.

There is sheet music curled in the case. I unrolled it and weigh it down with books on the corners to have a look. It is an old piece I learned for my senior year. I turn to the solo in the middle that I probably still have memorized. After running through the fingerings first without the bow, I am confident that I won't mess it up too badly and eagerly fit the instrument under my chin and put bow to strings.

The resonating notes run through the violin into my collarbone and through me as they fill up the cabin. The sound is so familiar and hauntingly beautiful that I am transported through time and beyond. First I am eighteen again, and then I am just the music.

"That's beautiful," he says behind me as I waver the last note to the very end of my bow. My eyes have fallen closed—I knew I could never forget that section, I had practiced it enough—and they fly open at the sound of his voice.

Eames is leaning in the door, looking infinitely better than before, and smiling. I lose my breath and am not sure exactly why. "Thanks." I clear my throat and lower the violin. "So feeling better?"

"Yes, thank you," he says, turning to lean more comfortably. I spot extra patches behind his ear, but whatever works. His smile turns a tad bit wicked as his hazel eyes look me over from bare feet to rumbled hair. (I had successfully navigated away from the hair-pulling stage of my musical re-acquaintance without combing it again.) Self-consciously I reach up and flatten it.

"I have brushed my teeth—just an FYI," he says casually.

I laugh, and he caves and laughs as well. I stand and put away my violin. "Well," I say. "There isn't much to do on this boat, but let's exhaust the other stuff first."

His eyebrows lift, enticed. "Right. Then let's get started."

"I could use a tan. Let's go up on deck."

… … … … … … …

I try my best not to be self-conscious as I emerge from below deck dressed in just trunks and an open shirt to find Eames already sunning; he'd changed at an impressive speed. He is in a reclined deck chair, eyes closed and face turned toward the sun. He's shirtless, bulky arms folded up to stack his hands behind his head. I can't help but think he rushed in order to be lying like this as I come out.

"Show off," I say and I honestly don't know if I meant to say it or not.

"How do you mean, Mr. Fischer?" he asks with such perfect innocence I can practically see the halo despite the bright Pacific Ocean sun. He's grinning wickedly and his biceps flex shamelessly. My eyes haven't left his body. It is surprisingly easy to look at it. He is not a perfectly sculpted David, but he is close—plus a few pudgy pounds, of course.

"Hey," Eames warns, low and playful, "You be _nice_ to my pudgy pounds."

"Sorry," I blush and tear my eyes from him with great deliberation. I look out at sea as I remove my shirt and situate myself in my deckchair.

The sun feels so good on my pale skin, I sigh languidly and slouch comfortably into the chair. "Ahhhhh, _yesssss_," I hiss in satisfaction. Eames chortles.

With my eyes closed, I see red from the intense sunlight, enjoy the heat of it on my skin. I remember what Dr. Evais said about my damaged flower and, since I figure it certainly can't _hurt_ anything, I begin imagining the sun's rays growing up a brand new, perfectly healthy flower. It's surprisingly easily.

"Sunscreen, Mr. Fischer," Eames says and I feel the tube pressed to my arm from where he's handing it over. I ignore it.

"Come on," he prompts, "Pale as you are, you need it more than most; don't need skin cancer on top of everything, do you?"

"Ah," I wave a hand, "If it feels this good, who cares if it kills you?"

Eames laughs heartily, "I like that attitude, but it doesn't suit a man with as many responsibilities as you, does it?"

Annoyed by the reminder that I'm the head of a huge corporate machine with thousands of people working under me, and yet am bobbing along in my yacht, I reply, "Fuck off,"

I open my eyes and take the sunscreen from him. He's sitting up, facing me, grinning and he winks, "There's a peach. For a moment, I thought I'd have to forcibly apply it onto you." His eyes drop down my pale rather unimpressive torso (I have zero time to exercise) and back up. He jumps an eyebrow, "It'd be fun, but skipping a few steps, I think."

I color at this and refuse to look at him, "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Don't _count on_ us fucking!" I snap. "I would like to _avoid_ it, if I can."

He looks genuinely insulted, "Oh, right. Don't fuck the help." Shaking his head, he lies back in his chair and adds, "Then maybe you shouldn't come on so strongly."

I groan, "Goddammit, Eames, I'm not _coming onto you_! I don't mean to say the flirty things, they just _happen_ without my consent!"

"You're saying them because you're thinking them," he points out. "You want me."

"Don't remind me," I growl through gritted teeth.

"What's wrong with wanting me?" he fairly demands in what has to be the meanest tone I've heard out of him so far.

"I don't want to want _anyone_ right now!" I yell. I actually yell it, and I don't know why. I'm suddenly furious—with Eames, with Peter for making him be here, with me for liking that he's here despite the infringement of my privacy that it is. To my surprise, Eames does not shout back at me. He's quiet and then he's laughing softly, shaking his head and rubbing his face.

"Fair enough," he finally says, crossing his arms and looking out to sea.

"Sorry," I say without meaning to. I let it slide, even though I would have preferred not apologizing. After all, _I'm_ the victim in this, not _him_.

He's on the same page, apparently. "You shouldn't be apologizing," he says in all seriousness. "You're the one that's…" he doesn't say it but we both hear it. Broken. He moves on, "I should know better than to take everything you say as a…." he drops a word here too. Game.

We're not here to play flirty love games; we're here to heal the mind raped.

He laughs in surprise and I realize I said it out loud. He looks around at me, grinning, "_Mind raped_?"

"What else do you call uninvited penetration?"

He snorts, looks back out at sea, pensive and slightly troubled, "Mind raped, it is then..."

I smear lotion onto my chest and arms and then turn on my Kindle. Between texts and calls with Kirsten and Uncle Peter regarding business and case updates, I read a novel. Eames, tanning beautifully, sits quietly sipping at a tall glass of the chef's best drink. Between refills and lying perfectly still with his eyes closed, he texts away doing his job—scheduling, making memos, and sending regular spy reports.

After he finishes his third drink and before I finish the novel, he gets up and finds the golf clubs and the stretch of green on the starboard side. The sun is near the horizon when I finish the book—completely swept away by the best seller. I shut the Kindle down and just sit in silence for a little bit, re-acclimatizing to my world and unconsciously watching Eames as he practices his swing.

With a twack and sloppy form, he sends the ball hooking straight into the ocean. He is all set to do another one when he catches me watching. I come to life and get out of my chair. "Hungry?"

"What's for dinner?"

"Whatever chef is cooking up," I shrug. "I didn't memorize the menu when I approved it."

He smirks and shakes his head.

"What?" I ask.

"Nothing," he says still smiling. I stretch, and my voice is strained, "Who said being a billionaire's assistant is hard work?"

We laugh as we separate into our rooms. I take a shower and get dressed on speaker phone with Uncle Peter as we go over everything I've missed since my last talk with Kirsten. Only once does my slip-up (I don't want to be him) happen and Uncle Peter is either too alarmed to say anything or too busy to care. I press the end-call button harder than necessary as I enter the dining room.

Eames is already sitting at the table with the food. He is wearing proper boat attire too, now, and he smiles when he sees me, drops a wink entirely out of habit I'm sure. "Sun kissed," he announces.

I look at my darkened arms and take a seat across from him and dig in without ceremony. "I didn't mean to sit out there that long, just got lost in the book."

"A good one was it?"

As we eat, I tell him all about it, revealing plot twists and surprises without warning. I cringe. "Sorry."

He chuckles warmly. "You told it wonderfully, Now I don't need to read it."

My phone vibrates on the table. It's Kirsten.

So, how's it going?

This is a personal text. I huff and text back: caught up on some reading. Still say shit out loud.

Boring! I mean with Joe ;)

Eames catches me when I take a peek at him, and smiles around the spoon in his mouth. I pointedly go back to texting as if it is business related.

I accidentally told him I love his eyes

GASP!

And that I would kiss his ass.

LOL you poor thing

HELP ME!

Sounds like you're doing enough already. Have fun

"She doesn't get it."

"Who doesn't get what?" he asks, delicately notifying me of the slip up. I drop the phone angrily and go back to eating. "Kirsten. She thinks my problem is hilarious."

"Now which problem is that, darling? Me, my business here, or you're broken Fisch Filter?"

I snort. "Three layers of the same problem."

He leans back in his chair with professionalism muting his amusement. "I've only been able to inform the board that you don't want to be him. That's all you've given me so far."

I put my elbows on the table and crack my knuckles. "Well, that'll have them running scared and drafting proposals to shut me out."

"Can they do that, if you own the whole thing?"

"They'll try. Goddammit, they'll never trust me again."

"Well, if you decide not to be him after all then none of it will really matter, will it? It'll be gone."

I snort. "I can keep the company together and not be him." It comes out defiantly, a challenge. I straighten and shake my shoulders. "And I'll be better than him, and it'll be easy."

He stares at me for a long silent moment, unblinking, looking slightly horrified, and then he clears his throat. "So the board has absolutely nothing to worry about? Fischer-Morrow will remain?"

"Yes," I say. "I can't even believe we're having this conversation."

"Just checking," he says, holding up his hands. I roll my lips. I had meant to only say the one word. I sigh. "But if this shit doesn't clear up soon I might just have to."

The pair of us trade looks of alarm, like the announcement laced in misery came from a third party, not my mouth, my mind. I gulp as the new thought settles around me—I don't like this, not at all. Not one bit. I hate getting to think things only _after_ I say them!

"Hey, hey, hey," he says, and I flinch violently from the table, from the space where I am just thinking straight out loud with absolutely no say in the matter. "It's like I peed in the pool and I just need to get out of the warm spot."

Eames burps up a confused laugh.

"FUCK!"

I squeeze my lips into my palm like I could tear them off and it would fix everything. I close my eyes in mortification and prayer. _God, or whatever, just make it fucking stop!_

"It's okay," Eames says softly after a moment, like I could be set off again. "You're just tired."

"I'm going to bed," I say thickly into my hand. I stand and leave the room without a single look in his direction. My heart is pumping painfully, sending mass amounts of blood to my face and my ears and I feel like I am going to be sick.


	9. Chapter 9: Like A Proud Man

**Chapter 9: Like A Proud Man**

The next morning I don't leave my room. I have decided to take a vow of silence. At the very least, by eliminating the volunteered information factor, tracking the severity of the issue will be easier to do, thus the sooner I will be able to tell when _or if_ my filter is growing back. I have explained this to my staff with a note and Eames has made the official announcement to everyone else so they won't call, sticking a clever doctor's note in there to excuse me from conference calls and the like.

"Why didn't I think of that?"

Dammit. I make a hash mark on a note pad. Eames answers my thought as he scrolls through a calendar on his phone. "Leave it to the professionals, darling."

I lean back on the couch and sink into another story, this one interrupted less due to the doctor's note—some texted questions can't wait, but all in all I no longer have a fair share of work to do. I foresee a terrible onslaught of _okay-here's-what-you-missed_ whenever this little experiment is over and I can reestablish contact verbally if not face to face.

In a preemptive strike against that avalanche, I send out a few emails demanding details, and then I feel free enough to actually relax and tick off another book from the list. This one was good, but not as good as the first. When I finish it, I happen to see the notepad has mysteriously gotten three more hashes.

I snatch it up and wave it in front of Eames' face imploringly.

"You shared a few thoughts on the point of view. I've never cared for first-person either."

I sigh and rub the back of my neck, remembering having that thought distinctly. It chills me to hear that I'd had no idea I'd spoken it, and wouldn't have if we hadn't started the hash marks. I lean back into the warm cushions and just want to curl up and die. Desperately, I close my eyes and imagine sewing up the hole some more.

I fall asleep and skip a few hours. When I wake I am pleased to find that there are no extra hashes. "At least I don't talk in my sleep."

"Nope," Eames says, dashing the page with the pencil from behind his ear. He is typing something up. I groan and it turns into a laugh. He glances sideways at me.

"If it's any consolation, I've noted so far that it happens when you first wake up and just before you drop off again."

"So when I'm tired."

Another hash. "Yup."

This makes me feel better. It sounds like something that is going away slowly—fading first in the middle, last to disappear at the edges of my day. And, worse-case scenario where I never heal, I can still run a business like this. Just need a good night's sleep, coffee, etc… This can be fixed.

….

I am supposed to be reading, but I have stopped doing that. Eames is more interesting. He has just spent the entire morning in the exercise room, but now he is devouring all the junk food on the boat.

"That's why you're fat."

He looks stung and rubs his little belly. "Leave me alone."

I pointedly make a hash mark to let him know that I hadn't meant to say that.

When the stewardess takes forever to bring me a drink, I mumble under my breath "Useless."

"Hey," he intones warningly. "Leave her alone too."

"What did I say?"

"You know exactly what you said. What you don't know is just how hard Leslie works on this boat. Or how hard any of us work for that matter."

It is just good for him that I am in a vow of silence, or he would have had his ass handed to him. Instead, I steam in silence and give him the cold shoulder.

He doesn't take to the silence very well. After the first evening of my locked lips, he sighs when I reach for the Kindle. I lift my eyebrows at him and he shrugs, waves it off.

Are you bored? I text him.

He smiles. "I was thinking about reading something."

I look down at the Kindle and shrug, hold it out to him.

He shakes his head. "No, you're making fabulous progress through that list. Don't let me steal it and slow you down."

I shrug again and text him. Read my next book aloud to me.

He sticks his tongue in his cheek as he thinks it over. Then he shrugs. "Olright."

I enjoy the animation in his face and voice as he reads dramatically, and I can tell he likes the attention. "What a ham."

He sticks the tip of his tongue between his teeth and I bite my lip and roll into the cushions to hide a blush. The book he reads aloud for us is my favorite so far, and we text about it over dinner—to be coy he is not talking anymore either—and our snorts are the only sound between the buzz of the phones.

Over the next few days, my hashes remain at the controllable level of only one or two in the morning and evening. We spend a full day reading another book between the many calls that keep us in touch with the real world. It has a great number of characters, but he can do a different voice for each one, even the couple of different European accents character description demand, and I accidently volunteer a compliment. "You've got a great tongue."

His eyes move from the page to me, and his smile stretches without showing teeth. Then that tongue flicks out to moisten his lips and he returns to the story. I am quickly swept off in the tale by his voice, and my eyes slide closed. They are still closed when he breaks stride with, "…waiting, and surreptitiously—hang on two Ts in surreptitiously? That can't be right."

I open my eyes and smirk at him, decide to temporarily break my vow to refrain from deliberate speak in order to spell it, "S-U-R-R-E-P-T-I-T-I-O-U-S-L-Y."

He gives me a look that is one part impressed and two parts _stop-showing-off_. He looks back at the word and shakes his head. "Looks wrong."

"Maybe you just can't spell," I tease.

"I am a natural speller," he insists.

"Then spell…knowledgeable."

With a casual shrug, he shoots it off as quickly as I had spelled my word, "K-n-o-w-l-e-d-g-i-b-l-e."

I snort and shake my head, "It's G-_E-A_-B-L-E."

"Same thing," he says waving it off.

I shake my head and throw out another spelling word, "Spell _heinous_."

He pulls a _be-fair-darling_ look and then after a pause shoots in the dark, "Haynoss."

I laugh. "You're just being silly."

He smiles sheepishly and pulls at his nose as he gets serious. "Okay, try h-i-e-n-o-u-s."

"E before I," I correct.

"So long as the letters are there," he says triumphantly and I laugh. He looks at the book but doesn't start reading. I see his hazel eyes roam over the page, looking at all the words, and then he drops it to his knee. "Give me more words."

"What, you gotta prove something now?" I ask with a grin. He just twitches his fingers at me. "Come on. Humor me."

I laugh. "Okay. Spell…" I cluck my tongue as I try to think of a really good one. He twitches his fingers at me again so I give the first adjective that comes to me, "Charismatic."

He hums as he thinks about it. "Know it starts with a C actually, so it's something like C-h-a-r-i-s-m-a-d-i-c."

"M-A-T-I-C," I correct. With a dramatic shake of my head I add, "It's those goddamn T-I's again, right?"

"Right!" he says with a bark of laughter. "Little fuckers."

I laugh and throw out another one, "Ingenious."

"M-E, no," we laugh and he makes a serious attempt, "I-n-g-e-nnnnnnnn-i-o-u-s?"

"Yes!"

He cackles and claps his hands. "See I can spell just fine."

"Lucky guess."

"Then give me another one."

"Silhouette," I say dauntingly.

He pulls in a breath through puckered lips. "Ooh, never give me _French_ words, darling, really. I won't even know where to begin."

I laugh. "I can never spell it right either. There's an H in a weird place and a couple of E's…"

"One more, and we'll read," he promises.

"I want it to be a good one," I say. I take a deep breath in thought. "….Lackadaisical," I say proudly after a minute.

His eyes glaze over. "Use it in a sentence."

I look up at the ceiling. "After my father died, I returned to work feeling very lackadaisical, for I did not have energy."

He is smiling as he contemplates his answer. "L-A-C-K-I-D-I-A-S-C-L-E."

I make a noise like a buzz on Jeopardy. "I love that you can get the first part of any word but then the ending is always so imaginative."

He shrugs, unperturbed for not knowing the flowery word off hand, and returns to the novel. Out of a shared desire to see one stupid character get their comeuppance, we read through dinner and are rewarded with a satisfying ending.

Over the next two days that it takes to reach Hawaii, I watch him—_surreptitiously_—as he paces the room while texting, hunkers low in the chair while reading, or stretches out like a dog in the sunshine when listening to music on my iPod while I pretend to meditate on my wrecked mind.

I really can't get enough of his walk, the way his hips sway so seductively even when he is being serious, or the way he laughs when he fumbles the words as he reads (distracted by something; a phone, my hash marks, once or twice my staring.) When he isn't doing his work over phone or reading to me, he is either playing games on his laptop, wandering around outside watching the ocean (hard to believe he was so deathly sea sick at first) or taking naps on the couch, hugging up to a pillow.

There is only one thing about his appearance that I decide I don't like.

Green has arrived on the endless horizon and is growing bigger one evening, as I am once again tackling the violin and owning a piece of music that I haven't looked at since high school. I glance over to where he is standing at the window, listening as he watches the tropical islands looming ahead of us. He's doing the thing I don't like. When I stop the music, he doesn't turn around, not until he realizes I am behind him.

I smile when he turns to look at me, eyebrows close, head low. With my bow hooked on my thumb, I put three fingers under his chin, push up until he is standing properly like a proud man. Confused, he adopts the posture I've seen him have while taking care of work, while being responsible. I've liked him most in those instances, and haven't liked his slinking off back to the corners to stand like something unwanted until needed again.

One side of his mouth lifts like he gets it and he tugs at the front of his shirt as if to say _right then, I'll never slouch again if you like_. I smile, and leave a light kiss on his lips before returning to the music stand. He is still watching me, stupefied, as I play the song one more time.

I miss a note here or there, perhaps a little stupefied myself, but I don't let that stop me from playing straight through the piece. I am shaking a little bit. It's not that I don't want him. I'm just afraid to be with him while I'm like this. Who knows what could come out of my mouth in that kind of situation? Random, twisted stuff I'm sure. I'm just not ready to know that part of myself.

"And shit, that was all out loud wasn't it?" I ask over the music. I face Eames in horror, pausing the song.

"Darling…." he can't look at me, but nods apologetically.

I put the instrument down. "Good night."

"Robert, wait," he says. "Come here."

He is still standing straight and strong and the authority in his voice makes me stop, go in his direction. When I reach him, he does nothing but look intently at me, my whole face, like he is trying to see the damaged part.

"I'm so sorry this has happened to you."

I swallow and try to laugh to lighten things. "Why? Because otherwise we'd be fucking each other's brains out?"

He laughs, but it is a flash emotion, quick over the surface of his trouble. "_That_ and… I'm sorry they weren't nice to you, that you feel like they… _raped_ you."

He is the first to say anything considerate like that. Everyone else has just pretended like it isn't happening, like it will definitely go away. I can't look at him anymore for all the gratitude I suddenly feel for him being here. He says nothing else and I am free to go to bed.

I go with a dry throat and heavy feet. I feel sick again. If I don't get better then too much is going to change. I will be forced to retire at thirty-one. I will have to learn to be myself all over again, only this time with max volume. It'll change who my friends are; Kirsten sure as hell isn't sticking around with someone who thinks she's a whore.

I'll go down in history as a cautionary tale. "Prett/Brinker started the Falsifying True Inspiration law, and Robert Fischer had sub security training and everything but he _still_ got his mind raped to pieces when he took a nap on a plane, hasn't been the same since. So be careful kids."

I rub my face and don't even notice that I am praying to someone my father thought it was weak to believe in. "Oh God help me."


	10. Chapter 10: A Way To Keep My Mouth Shut

**Chapter 10: A Way To Keep My Mouth Shut**

Not at all ready to be around masses of other people, I give the Captain orders to sail us down the island chain and around, giving him permission to send out for supplies and whatnot. So the green horizon stays on our left, I will stay safely swept under the rug in my current weak state, and Eames will keep putting patches behind his ears and gazing pensively at the landmasses as if they are his only escape from a nightmare.

"Bad news," Kirsten says over speaker phone. I have ended the vow of silence, or at least, suspended it for the middle of the day when I know I am unlikely to blurt things. "The blonde guy that seduced the two of you has disappeared."

Eames and I trade looks at Kirsten's jab, but let it go. I ask angrily, "Disappeared, what do you mean _disappeared_?"

"Saito is hiding him somewhere, no doubt. Anyway, we can't find him because we can't touch Saito."

"Why not?"

"International jurisdiction—extradition—it's a bureaucratic nightmare. Anyway, it's our word against his. We don't have much."

"What about Dr. Evais? She has proof—"

"She has proof someone entered your mind and left a few harmless dream fragments. At best we might be able to charge Saito with _attempted_ Falsifying True Inspiration which will be the same fine Brinker paid, something Saito'll just sneeze at."

"Thanks Kirsten," I say. I turn off the phone and drop my face into my hands.

"Do you know what I don't get?" I ask after a moment. "How did Prett survive this scott-free? If it was all the same thing they did, then why isn't _his_ mind torn?"

"Well," Eames begins thickly. He clears his throat. "As I understand it, they got the idea in place but it didn't stick."

"It didn't stick here either!" I say with a frantic shrug. "Whatever weak-ass business plan they wanted to impregnate me with was torn to shreds with the rest of my filter. Now all the bigger questions—" I cut off.

"Who am I now? Who should I be? Does God exist?" he supplies. It is such a spot on list that I am sure I must have been walking around this boat muttering it. I close my eyes and nod. "Yeah."

"Well, you are Robert Fischer, a thirty one year old gay man, a CEO born for power and wealth and luxury, a tad bit selfish and judgmental, but over all you've secretly a heart of some kind of gold, and you really shouldn't be anything else, ever….. oh, and if you care for my two cents on the matter: God has bigger problems than you and me."

I look down at my fingernails. "Sounds like you got me all figured out."

"I've read a temporarily open book."

I appreciate the word _temporarily_. "It's not fair. I'm not learning anything about you."

"I'm Eames, a thirty year old gay man with a past of recklessness and here I am quickly getting attached to yet more…trouble," he finishes with a smile to show he wants a different word for it but this one is not wrong.

I am nothing but trouble right now. I look out to sea for a minute and then ask, "Did you call me selfish and judgmental?"

"You keep calling me fat, and we never do what I want to do," he defends.

"That's because all _you_ want to do is _me_," I say with a laugh.

"Not true," he says, not laughing. "I just want to kiss you again."

The ready confession makes me sigh and close my eyes. He steps closer, remembering to stand up straight. "No honestly, can I just kiss you again? That's all, I promise. Think of it this way, it'll be a way to keep your mouth shut."

I bite my lip to control my grin. My heart is pounding. Then I nod.

Hazel eyes spark, big lips part. Two big hands encase my face, brush gently back over my ears and his warm mouth covers mine. It's electric, my lips are tingling, and my breath thins out like I am smothered in blankets. I'm smothered in him.

The kiss breaks so I can gasp some air. He licks his lips and I realize he is shaking in the half second his hands stay on me, and then he is moving back. I move with him. "Where are you going?"

He shakes his head, still retreating. "You're not—ready for this, darling."

That stops me, because it's true. I'm not ready to see what happens when I lose what little control over myself that I have anymore, and if Eames keeps kissing me like that then I won't have the control it will take to stop anything from happening. Judging from his shakiness, he has little self-control too. Mostly, I am struck by the honor in what he's doing. He's respecting me.

"Thank you," I say somewhat weakly to his back. He lifts a hand to show he heard as he disappears back inside. I rub at my lips, still all tingly.


	11. Chapter 11: Kissing is Good Safe

**Chapter 11: Kissing is Good (Safe)**

As the next few days pass, we are only together for about as long as we can kiss, and then it is better that we stay in separate rooms. I wish we could kiss longer before he reaches his limit, but I sort of love that he can't (he wants me that badly and I can't deny that's an ego boost) or how charming it is to be wanted by such a gentleman. I've never had a real gentleman before, and I suspect he's never been one.

It's all so very new and exciting that I feel like we're teenagers, making out for hours and leaving it at that as if we're too inexperienced to go further. We don't even grope. (A thought which popped out of me between kisses made the rule; "Better not touch my crotch or things will get too hot to stop.") Instead, he holds my face in both of his hands, occasionally tracing his fingers down the tender front of my throat or combing all ten of them through my hair.

He can't suck on my neck—trial and error helped us realize that it leaves my mouth open to say things like, _been a while since I had a love bite, my neck isn't what I want to be sucked on_,or_ Fuck, I've been missing the newest episodes of 30 Rock_! I can suck on _his_ neck, though, but I only spend a lot of time doing that once. Somehow we let things progress until I am straddling him and with the very bottom of his earlobe between my teeth, it is only Uncle Peter's call to talk business that saves us.

We rarely kiss sitting any place where reclining is easy, and then not sitting anyplace at all when straddling him starts to happen as easily as saying my thoughts without noticing. So we kiss standing, holding onto each other on the deck of my boat with the sunset and everything, like those lame covers to romance stories. I secretly love it—only not so secretly because once that's the first thing out when his lips leave mine to say goodnight.

I like it best when he wraps his arms around me, via sliding his palms around my sides and up my back as he draws me in to hold me tight against him. In times like these, I groan like I want to say something, and I'm one hundred percent certain that if it weren't for Eames sucking on my tongue, I would.

I would think out loud something that would push us over the edge. _I want more of you_. _I'm so hard right now. I want your mouth all over me. Fuck me, fuck me now_… Or something I can't even predict; something that reveals some mortifying sexual kink I don't even know I have.

This is what I hold onto when my body is close to shaking because it wants so much more of the one pressed to it; I make myself realize that my condition would take all the heat out of this so that sex with Eames can't _possibly_ be as good as my imagination wants to say it would be.

Kissing. Kissing is good (so good) and _safe_. With panted words of departure and his wide, playful smile that just reminds me of everything that I want, it always stays at just kissing between us.

It only takes me a couple of days to reach my limit. When he tears away from my lips and leaves the sitting room at a brisk pace—not even a single word of departure this time—I am left breathless and pulsing. He left in a hurry, slouching with his head down and fingers to his lips, and I stare after him for several moments, just wanting him _back_. And then I head to bed.

Once I know he has climbed to the top deck, I shut myself up in my room ready for another experiment. My hands are shaky with my plan as I prepare myself. I am going to do a test run _alone_ first, to see if I can keep my mouth shut for this….

It's easy to get lost in the idea of Eames. I remember his kisses, still tingling on my lips, the soft tickling of his beard, his eyes—that wonderful color—drinking me up so _thirstily_. I imagine his arms around me, his skin against my skin, his breath in my ear, his hands on me, his power over me—

I am biting my lip and shaking, but it's good. _So_ good. I don't know if it's simply because it's been a while, or because of the man I want, or because of the sheer thought of him on board wanting this as much as me. I might be tasting blood from biting my lip, but I don't care, it is better than speaking; I am _that_ determined to pass this test, to get an All Clear, to earn a Pass Go and Collect Two Hundred Dollars card.

_Eames_. My nostrils flare hard with my breath and then I start panting through gritted teeth and I can't stand it. I want it _for real_ to hell with what might happen! Weirdly, I laugh, but I'm just that excited because I've decided we _can_ do it—the only noises I am making are the normal ones, and his name, grunted in a dirty secret.

With a choke and a tremble, I finish and slowly unwind. I haven't redressed yet—I can't close my eyes without seeing smiling hazel checking me out, and things might be starting up again—when there's a voice directly outside my door.

"Darling, you've left your phone—"

"_Shit_, don't come in here, I'm masturbating!"

There is sudden, dead silence on the other side of the door. Then I hear him move quickly away.

Kill me.

Just. Let me die.

And _Christ_, what if he had someone on speaker? Fuck! I feel my heart wither and die in the mortification. I consider never leaving this room ever again.

But that's unacceptable. I know I am stronger than that. And anyway, we are all grownups here. So this will just go down as the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me, and that will be that. Anyway, there's no use pretending this sort of thing _wasn't_ going to happen—obviously preferably in secret—but putting the topic of sex out in the open so soon between us had just turned this entire vacation into a weird, prolonged foreplay that the kissing was just making worse. Really, if it hadn't been me, it would have been him.

Feeling like it will just be worse the longer I stay in here—don't want him thinking, I don't know, that I went back to it or something—I get cleaned up and track him down. He is sitting very still and quiet in the living room. My phone is still in his hand like he's forgotten about it.

I clear my throat and he jumps, whirls.

"So, who was on the phone?" I ask with a really put-on air of casualness that just makes it worse, but I can't help it. I can't actually meet his eyes, but I pretend too and then pretend I have more interesting things in the far corner to examine. He is taking care of the other corner inspections.

"Peter, I think. I don't know. I didn't answer it," he says. That actually makes it almost all better. A weight lifts off me. "Good, then it's just between us." We both chance a glance at the same time and blush. Then we are laughing, and I collapse into the nearest chair. "I wish that hadn't happened."

"For the record, I wasn't going to come in."

I nod and cover my eyes. "I panicked."

He nods, "Caught with your hand in the biscuit tin."

"Go to hell."

We chuckle some more. Now that this story never has to leave this boat, I am able to see the humor in it. He leans back with his hands behind his head,

"I wish you'd invited me."

I drop my hand to give him a look that I try to keep my amusement out of. "I was testing myself."

He snickers, "Pass or fail?"

I cover my eyes again and don't answer that question. Though it had been going well, my little slip at the end has completely put me off. "Can we just move on?"

"Certainly. Never happened."

"Thank you,"

"'Course."

I sigh loudly and still have to look anywhere but at him because of the humiliation. This is the first time since puberty I have ever been caught—well, almost caught. I grin as I consider that I've had a pretty strong run, one to be proud of. But then again…

"Mom was dead and Dad didn't give a fuck enough to visit my room, so of course I have never been caught before."

Eames clears his throat, but I already know I said it out loud. I groan, and bite my lips closed to keep from saying that we can add post-ejaculation as another weakness for my filter. It irks me to have yet another reason not to sleep with Eames. I draw in a deep breath and close my eyes to do some Mind Sewing.

"There is shit else to do on this boat."

"Whot's that, Mr. Fischer?"

I clear my throat, "I'm going to meditate for a while."

He nods and sighs, looking lost and miserable and over-all so precious that I have to grin. He heads for his room with a goodnight salute, his head down. I clear my throat, and as he passes right by my chair, I meet his eye and pop myself on the chin, straightening my spine, and he puts his chin up and stops slouching instantly with a grin. I can't help but to look around and watch him go, hips swinging.

"Sexiest walk _ever_."

"You're killing me!" Eames cries just outside the door, without looking back.

"Goodnight," I say as apologetically as possible.


	12. Chapter 12: The Worst That Can Happen

**Chapter 12: What's the Worst That Can Happen?**

Land has switched to the other side of the boat when dinner is finally put in front of me the next night. I sigh loudly at the sight of it; there has been some kind of delay and it has pissed me off. "How hard is it to serve one goddamn person his meal? _Idiot_."

A flat hand pops me in the back of the head as the stewardess—Leslie—storms away in quiet outrage. A moment later, Eames is dropping down in the seat in front of me. He's giving me a hard look, "They made your food just as fast as a stove that needed repairing could let them. If you bothered to get status reports, you'd know these things."

"Why should I get reports? It's not my job to keep this boat in one piece."

"No, it's not. It's Leslie's," Eames replies promptly, steadily, "And Captain George's, and Phillip's and Rosa's. All _you_ have to do is lie around, moan, and order other people to do things. You must excuse them for having a job _a bit_ more difficult than yours and, better yet, you must show them the respect they are due, yeah?" He is leaning back in his chair, one leg hanging over the other, hazel gaze as steady as his voice.

Suddenly outraged, I lean over my plate and can feel it, that my eyes are harder than they've been in a long time. "Who do you think you are to tell _me_ what to do on _my_ yacht?"

Eames's eyes flash dangerously, his jaw goes tense, he does not move a muscle, and there isn't a smidge of humor in it when he says, "Oh, you can force lessons about proper posture and pride onto _me_, but I'm out of place when I try to guide you away from being a prick?" he looks away, shaking his head, "But I guess I'm still just _the_ _help_ that you aren't supposed to fuck_,_ am I not?"

Having never heard this nasty tone in him before, I am rendered speechless. I drop back in my chair, anger gone but tension remaining in my shoulders and down my back. "It's just sexual frustration," I think out loud.

A long silence follows this. I pick at my dinner, but I'm not hungry. I scoff and say it out loud without meaning to—being a kind of surrender to Eames' latest point, I certainly would have kept it to myself had I been able to, "I insulted Leslie over food I don't even _want_."

I push the plate away, suddenly sick with myself. "I don't want to be _him_."

This time, for the first time, I _meant_ to say it. For the briefest moment, it's like the world shifts and clicks gently into place. If the sky was spinning, it's stopped. If the ground was tilting, it's level again.

Eames looks up at me, only his eyes moving from the table cloth to my face and his familiar softness if back, "Respect others—_all _others and not just people richer than you—and you won't be."

I nod like I'm accepting the challenge. It's the least I can do; Eames has been taking my lessons on posture so silently, actually _trying_, God love him, to stand up straight in the way I like. I, at least, can start _trying_ to think of others before myself if that's what he likes.

"I'll try my best. For Eames," I say. My use of his name instead of the second person pronoun gives it away that it's a slip. But there it is now, a promise floating in the air between us: I will try to be a better man, just like he will try to be a taller one.

He is smiling at me, a full on, wide, shining smile and some of the tension leaves my shoulders at just the sight of it. This time, when I lean over my plate, it's only to get closer to him. It's now too late in the day, though, and the words are rolling out without my consent, "I want to know if you thought about me last night like I thought about you."

Flushing, the attractive Englishman looks down and then back up at me with an impish grin, "I don't have to answer that."

I shake my head, unable to kill a smile, "No you don't. But there it is, I guess... I _do_ want to know."

He can't look at me. He looks everywhere else, red and grinning, and I soak up the sight. After a minute, his smile fades and a line appears between his eyebrows, and finally he voices his question, "Would it be so truly _horrible_, to be with me while you're in this condition?"

Now _I_ can't look at _him_. "Yes," I tell my dinner.

He leans in, voice low though we are alone in the room, and I can feel his eyes on me. "What if I _like_ whatever you say as much as I've liked it all so far?"

"But you haven't liked it all," I counter somewhat desperately, my eyes landing on him for a second before bouncing out to sea. "I'm a prick, you said it yourself! And I—" I cut off and add, "And god knows what…" Eyes on gourmet food again, I shake my head and don't finish the sentence even in my head.

"Come on, pet," he fairly begs in a voice that is wholly unfair; warm, rumbly, and grinning, "Whot's the worst that can happen, hm?"

"I could turn out to be a freak," I say by accident.

"You're not," he says promptly.

"You can't know that!" I reply hopelessly.

"How can you _not_ know that you're not?" he demands. "At thirty one, famous and publically _out_, how can you _not_ know yourself enough to _trust yourself_ ?"

I'm getting angry again. My eyes snap to him and I say, "I just _don't_. Not every gay man is wild and dirty, okay? I'm not that _experienced_, if you must know. I've been working too goddamned hard to be just like my father, who I loved, but who fucking _hated_ me, to spend too much time exploring what gets me off! Okay?"

Silence follows my outburst. His eyes never leave me and I can't look up. He stands up and then he's pulling me up. His hands slide around my sides and up my back, so perfectly I scramble to think if I could have ever said it out loud that I love it the most when he does that, but next second, our noses are bumping and our eyes are locked and he's saying in a voice thick with desire, "God, Robert, let me. _Please_, I swear to God you can't make me not want you."

I can't think; I can only want.

"I'll say I told you so, but fuck it, _okay_. Yes, Eames. God, yes-" my words are cut off by his kiss, hard and with a little bit of teeth, and it's only when we both need air that it breaks. I'm shaking as he pulls me towards my room, doing his best to keep his lips on mine, but navigating makes that difficult, and my mouth is free to say that he had better be worth it.

"Right back at you, you snarky git," he teases and then he steals my breath in a kiss. We bump into the wall and nearly trip on each other's feet. He has to free my mouth again to properly steer us but my laughter keeps my racing desire-filled thoughts to myself all the way to my door.


	13. Chapter 13: I'll Consider Your Opinion

**Chapter 13: I'll Consider your Opinion**

"I'll have to bottom, of course."

He frowns as he pushes me into my room and shuts the door behind us, "_have_ to?"

I shake my head, pointedly try to steal his lips in a silent plea for him to ignore it but he turns and my kiss lands on his jaw as he asks, "Do you prefer to top, pet?"

"It's just," I admit reluctantly, "every man I'm ever with prefers to top because they're so big and strong and I'm so—pretty."

He grips my upper arms and holds me away so that he can look me in the eye, "You never just _asked_ them to switch it up? You can, you know. You have a _right_."

We're not even out of our shoes yet, and I already want to curl up and die. My embarrassment makes me snap, "I _know_!"

He takes my face in his hands and kisses me, his passion apparently unaffected by our little detour. He's undoing my shirt when he breaks away to say, "Right then, I'm calling dibs on bottom."

I laugh, "Don't do that."

"Don't what? Please you?" he pushes my shirt from my shoulders and his nose bumps mine, "Robert, gorgeous, I don't know if you know this, but people pleasing each other is the entire _point_ of sex."

"But how can I please _you_ by making you bottom when you want to top—" I start, and he cuts in with a high eyebrow, "Who said I want to top? _I_ never said it."

I have no reply except that, "I assumed…"

He kisses me, turns us on the spot and drops down on the bed, pulling me down over him. With one of his legs hooked over my hip and his other sliding between my thighs, he says against my mouth, "Since you wanted to know earlier, I did spend last night thinking about you—you inside of me."

My groan is words, "I _want_," and then I take his whole mouth, and I'm pushing against his thigh, already hard. He gets my belt off without breaking the kiss, but my mouth is free for his button-less shirt to go over his head, and I'm wriggling out of my pants when I say as my eyes find his gut, "Squishiest man I've ever been with."

A crease shows up between his eyebrows, and I'm already apologizing, but he catches the back of my head in one of his big hands and kisses me mid word. Moving on from it, not getting offended by my third comment about his body type-God he's so good.

"Too good for me," I slur it against his mouth. His next kiss has a smile in it and his pants go, and we're both straining in our shorts. We get out of them with our mouths locked so that I can't say anything stupid, but with both of us finally naked and together and this combination long overdue, it takes only a minute of rutting against him before it's time for lube, and I have to break away to retrieve the little bottle.

He's gotten under blankets when I rush back from the bathroom, and it's as I'm climbing under with him, and catch a glimpse, that I say with _a laugh_—to my horror—"Oh, no wonder you tried to hide it. You're small!"

He releases a breath, pure sound of caught-off-guard-embarrassment.

"Fuck!" I cry as I drop to an elbow on the mattress beside him and shake my head vigorously, "It's okay. You're—_fine_. I—Just—Goddammit, just kiss me so I'll shut up!"

Obliging, it takes us both a minute to find the passion we left off on before this monumental display of what a bastard I truly am derailed us. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember his promise that he'll still want me no matter what I say. His deep kisses, his hands roaming over my sides and all over me, start to assure me he'd been telling the truth.

I grunt when I press against him, and he rolls and pulls me over him.

I so rarely top, there is the briefest moment, as I'm up on my knees between his thighs, of displacement and worry that I don't know what I'm doing. As Eames said, this is all about pleasing each other, and I really do desperately want to please him. (I'm failing so horribly as a conversationalist, the least I can do is give him the best fuck of his life.) No one has made me feel as good as he manages to do with just a smile from across the room, and I want to somehow return the favor tenfold, in kisses and caresses and whole bodies moving together.

"I want to amaze you," I breathe.

"Oh, you do, Robert. You do. You amaze me already."

"You're just saying that."

"No."

"Yes. Look at you, you've had tons of men—wow, I should get checked for STDs after this is over."

Eames laughs, but not in an amused way, and he sits up, denying me access by dropping his knees and turning his hips. "How sleazy do you think I am?"

"What? Fuck—I didn't mean—"

"I know you didn't mean to say it, but is that how you see me? Just another dumpy fellow who'll shag anyone he can get, sores and all?"

Of all the times words fall out of my mouth without me trying, now they dry up. I have nothing to say, and my voice cracks emptily in my throat. All of his passion is gone, now; my broken filter took the wind right out of his sails and mine as well.

He stares at me with that level, calm look until I find my voice. "No. No, god, I—that was just something that popped out there, some practical thinking and it came out wrong, at the wrong time."

I fall onto my back and rub my face roughly with a groan. "God damn son of a bitch."

"You're tired, darling," he says. "Maybe we should try this another time."

And this becomes the second most humiliating thing to happen to me. Doesn't matter what the situation is, it's just embarrassing when the breaks are put on with that kind of statement. And on top of everything, I was right and he was wrong. I _did_ chase him off with my craziness.

"I told you so," I say dejectedly. I roll to face the wall and curl up to die. "I'll see you tomorrow, maybe." Right now I have no plans to get out of bed ever again.

He goes to his elbow behind me, leans over me, a shadow of a smile on his lips. "You mean I can't stay here?"

"What?" I ask with a snort.

One of his hands snakes around my waist as he settles into the pillows with an adorable smile. "After all that, you're just going to throw me out?"

"I thought—"

I feel him shake his head because his nose brushes the hair at the back of my head. "I'll take you any way I can get you." He kisses my ear. "But not with you upset. We'll sleep. And in the morning, after you get focused for the day, we'll try again, hm?"

I laugh and look back at him. "This is my life now isn't it? I have to schedule a fuck."

"And that's entirely why I'm here," he says with a wolfish grin. "Shall I pencil it in Mr. Fischer?"

I laugh and voice a fear in a half-whine that I'm not proud of, "Urg, we're having to try _too hard_ here. Maybe it just shouldn't happen."

"It would have already happened, if you weren't such a worry wart, my dear. And… you do know that if you don't like leading a life full of schedules then you don't _have_ to."

He takes his arm back as he says it; like he doesn't want to be crossing too many lines all at once. I roll to face him and cheek the corner of my pillow aside so that I can look fully into his eyes. "What do you think I should do?"

Alarm fires in the speckled green. "Don't ask _me_!"

"Why not? You're the one who told me to value all people, not just richer ones. So I'll consider your opinion. Really, tell me what you think."

He swallows nervously and rolls onto his back to look at the ceiling. He blinks a few times. "I just want you to be happy, Robert—I want to be sure you'll be okay, if I go away."

"Are you considering leaving me?" Had I been in control, I would have left off the me, but it tacks itself on and there it is.

"I don't want to," Eames says, "but…my job…."

"Dad is dead. He has no say in who I fuck anymore." I move closer, drop an arm over his side and hold him as my forehead touches his ear, "No one's going to make you leave."

He says nothing, just continues to look at the ceiling. I feel like he doesn't trust me, trust that once we finally do start an intimate relationship I'm not going to get rid of him anytime soon. But I won't. It's not my style and never has been.

My limited experience doesn't come from a lack of sex, just a lack of varied sex. I've only been with men while in a relationship with them, and I have only managed to keep a handful of those going behind the scenes. They never lasted, because I always kept them semi-secret, never allowed to progress to a certain point where my father would hear about it.

That had been our unspoken agreement regarding my sexuality; I could do whatever floated my boat, but Maurice didn't want to hear about it unless it was with busty women with long legs. (It never was, not even a little bit.) So in making sure to focus only on things we had in common, my love life had always taken the furthest back burner to my busy life of trying to please a cruel father.

I don't know when my turbid thought become dreams, but they do.

"Rob," Eames whispers in my ear at some point in the night, pulling me from a fretful dream. His chest is flush against my back and his arm is under my head and the other wrapped around me. His voice is soft and slurring with sleep, "You're talking in your sleep."

"I am?"

He hums, pats my hip.

"Sorry," I slur.

"It was a nightmare. I want you to get a good rest," he whispers, shifting. His feet touch mine and because his feel cool, I cover them with mine as I say, "Thank you,"

My lips lift in a heavy smile because I know he only wants me to get rested so I won't be tired for tomorrow's attempt. I hear him snicker, and I briefly wonder if any of that came out coherently (I know a lot of noise came out of my mouth) but then I fall back into a different dream. This one is better, about tomorrow.


	14. Chapter 14: Something I Don't Know

**Chapter 14: Robert, There's Something You Don't Know**

When I wake up the next morning, I am alone in the bed, but it is still warm in his indention in the mattress. I don't get up to find him. Not yet. First, I want to hold onto the dream I had been having. I can't at the moment recall any actual sexy scene, but there must have been one; I've got a little wet spot on my sheet.

I close my eyes, but all I can recall of it is the idea of living with Eames, having him with me constantly, even after we get off this boat. Mostly, I can remember the light-headed feeling and the warmth in my chest from having that kind of security in at least one aspect of my life.

I breathe deeply for the first time today and on the release is my thought, "I want that."

I laugh to myself and rub my face. Time to meditate. I focus on the image of a spaghetti strainer attached to my head like it is my skull, and nothing can get out but what I consciously poke through the tiny holes. It takes time, a lot of thought, to get anything out. This is a top notch, high security filter.

"_No, dammit, you're out of your mind_,"

My eyes fly open. Eames' voice is a snarled whisper from the bathroom. I know instantly that he is on the phone with someone.

"No," he says again, forcibly. "I won't do it, and you can't make me….piss off! You don't know what I've been doing….as a matter of fact, yes, okay?"

I sit up to better hear. He is quiet for a long time, and then he sighs as if in pain. "Don't do that, please—and you know I don't beg to employers—but please. For the love of God."

I get out of the bed, confused and approach the door. I have no idea what on earth Uncle Peter could possibly be insisting Eames do. It is unlike my godfather to ask someone to do something without knowing they would do it; to hire an insubordinate assistant in the first place. It is cold in the room so I step into my pants and shrug on a shirt as I listen.

"Saito, they are _children_—"

"Saito?" I ask loudly. My cover blown, I push the door open with a palm. It isn't even latched. Eames is sitting on the lip of the tub, his face in his hands, and his cellphone at his ear. He springs to his feet when I step in.

"I have to go," he says to the phone. He has it disconnected before I can get it out of his hand. The number on the list is blocked, I can't call it back. I look at Eames with my forehead scrunched. "Why were you talking to Saito about children? What is going on?"

"Fuck," he breathes, pulling at his nose. He straightens the robe he is wearing. "Robert, there's something you don't know."

"Were you—is Saito trying to get you to work with him? Is this about the mind crime on the plane?"

He breathes loudly through his nose for a few breaths, eyes locked on me in what has to be the least flirty stare I have ever seen on him. "Yes. It didn't work right last time, so he wants to try something else, and I was saying no."

"He thought, what, that he could get close to me through you?"

"Yes and….that he could count on me again, after previous services rendered."

The breath in my chest puffs out. "Previous services rendered?" I press on my eyes. "Please tell me you're talking about a blow job."

"I wish I were, darling. But no. _I_ shared a dream with you on the plane that day."

It is dead silent in the little bathroom. I am staring at him like I can't understand what is wrong with the picture. I hear the words telling me that my life should be folding in on itself right about now, that I should start shouting, screaming, crying even—I register what a betrayal this is, the anomaly that it should be so big when we still know so little about each other. But I don't do anything.

I finally tear my eyes from his and look at the thing in my hand. It is a phone. I should call the police. I should report that I have been living with the criminal they've been searching for; that I've kissed him and flirted with him, and spent the night with him, but I don't. I can't.

Part of me doesn't want this leaving the boat out of the shame it would cast on me. "_Jesus, Robert. Can't you sniff out one little worm_?"

"I'm sorry," he breathes, terrified.

The other part of me can't forget that Eames had been caught refusing the new job. "That's it. That's what's wrong. He's not the guy he's telling me about."

Eames' eyebrows are high, his hazel eyes are wide, and his lips are parted. "Darling?"

I laugh, realizing only half my thought slipped. "It's okay," I say, swallowing. "The Eames they hired first, I don't think you're the same anymore, that's why you—this…I'm not mad."

He blinks. I wait. Then, finally, he breathes a kind of bark laugh and looks me up and down, "God, you're really not, are you?"

I shake my head, "Weird, right?"

It's almost like he wants to make me angry as he cries, "But _I'm_ the one who did this to you, Robert! I—I _mind raped_ you! I _broke_ you! You keep saying your thoughts out loud because of _me_!"

"Surely it wasn't _just_ you," I puzzle out loud, "That blond guy on the plane. He helped, right?"

Eames gapes, "Yeah, he helped. And so did everyone else in first class that day—Jesus, Robert, we destroyed your mind _for money_ and you're just standing there!"

"I'm not _destroyed_," I say, hurt by his words. "Is that what you think of me? Something you ruined? Something to pity?"

"No—" His eyes go wide and now he's the one desperately trying to reel words back into his mouth. He grabs me as if I'd been leaving, but I hadn't moved. With his fingers wrapped around my upper arms, he's holding me against him. "No, Robert. God. I'm just—I don't understand how you can't _hate me_. I've done this thing to you, and then I've gotten close to you, lying this whole time and—"

"You weren't getting close with ulterior motives, were you?" I ask, feeling my first spark of alarm and anger, but he's shaking his head.

"No, I was meant to move on after confirming our idea took place, but then you fainted and were saying strange things and I was curious—And, well, when the investigation started, it would have been wise of me to get the hell out of Dodge, but I had to make sure you were okay first…"

I'm smiling now, "See?" I said. "You're here because you want to be, because you care. How can I be angry at that?"

He's staring at me, hazel gaze wide and bright, "God, this has to be a dream. You _can't be this okay with it_! I _redefined_ you, Robert. You're thoughts aren't all _yours_ anymore!"

I blink at him as I turn all of that over in my mind. "It doesn't feel like it," I tell him truthfully. "I…" I chew my bottom lip, looking for the words, and finally say, "I don't feel like you've robbed me of anything by doing any of that. _Redefined_ doesn't seem like the right word. I still feel like _me_-only a turned upside down, still figuring things out, version of me. I'll get it sorted."

Eames huffs, scratches the back of his head, a crease between his eyebrows. He's looking at me like I've finally lost it. And suddenly, I feel self-conscious enough to look away. I recall being certain I was losing my mind, that one day, I wouldn't know the difference. Has that day arrived? "I don't know. Maybe I just need time to think on it," I think outright.

Suddenly, he's got his arms around me, and he's holding me tightly, and his beard in against my neck. "You're amazing, my darling." The relief is so heavy in his voice, it sounds choked like with tears, "I already said you were and this is why. Instead of hitting me and calling the police, you're smiling at me and letting me hold onto you…"

"I like when you hold onto me," I say on purpose, finally putting my arms around him. We stand there in the bathroom in an embrace, his phone still in my hand, his face still in my neck. A sniff from him alarms me into asking,

"Were you _so_ sure I would turn you in?"

"Yes," he bursts with surprising wetness, and another sniff. "You _are_ a prick, after all."

I laugh and shove him away and with his head down, he turns away dashing at his eyes. Unable to meet the emotional sight straight on, I look away as if to give him privacy as he pulls himself together.

"What will happen to you if I do turn you in?" I ask the shower curtain. He whirls around in alarm, and I don't blame him. My tone is one of contemplation, like I'm toying with him that I might just do it after all.

I suddenly find that I can't bring myself to issue a retraction; I'm realizing that maybe with some thought, I could conjure up all that old anger and humiliation and want for revenge. What happened to the angry man who felt mind-raped and needed justice? What happened to the dog on the hunt that would find the bastards and throw them in prison, _period_?

Search as I might, I can't find him anymore. I get a strange feeling that he was swallowed up in violin music, dramatic evening readings, and youthful make-out sessions with a man who never acted like my broken filter was a problem. I feel like he decided he wouldn't be his father, and stopped hating the world and everyone in it. He grew enough of heart to know forgiveness…

There is still a part of me, though, which does not want to let the old me go so easily, so I stay quiet, let my question, which still hangs in the bathroom between us, (What happens if I turn you in?) stand because maybe I will still call the police. It might be stupid not to…

Eames is silent for a moment and then realizes that I'm still waiting for an answer. He gives it with his eyes on the floor,

"Well, they've already got evidence on Cobb, and then they've got Saito on suspicions as the employer. Turning me in will provide proof and then through him they'll get to Cobb. Then _he'll_ probably implicate the others in a deal-cutting process to avoid life in prison. Regardless of his sentence, though, his babies will lose the last parent they have left.

"The point man will finally be caught by about six world-wide warrants, and he'll probably end up in the same prison as at least _one_ dangerous person he's betrayed in the past so he wouldn't survive the first night behind bars. Our lovely architect will never finish school and will go to prison for life before she's ever even lived it, or she'll incriminate a brilliant, kind old professor—the grandfather of those kids Cobb has—in trying to save herself.

"The chemist, if they can find him, will kill himself before going to prison because he's been lost in dreams for the last decade and content with it. If you ask him, he'll tell you reality is a fifty-fifty chance and if this one goes to rot, he'll confidently shoot himself in the heart to wake up."

"Jesus," I breathe. I had never considered that the people who'd done this to me could be _people_. Eames nods, studying me anxiously. I frown, "What about you?"

"Me? Not only am I a dreamer, but I'm a currency counterfeiter, a legal-documents forger, a con-artist, and an art thief. Altogether, I'll get three life sentences with no parole, where I'll end up being some baby-murder's bitch in exchange for protection from being frequently raped by everyone else." He says this calmly and I flinch away from the image, cringe, choke, "Jesus Christ!"

He's watching me when I finally look at him again to ask, "Why do you all do it—live lives that lead to that kind of stuff? You're intelligent and competent, and they must be, too—so why?" I'm furious, but only at how stupid he has turned out to be.

"Sheer desperation, love," he replies. He shrugs, "Backed into a corner, no other options."

"There are _always_ other options," I insist, "other roads to take when one doesn't work out—"

"Not when you spent your teenaged years burning every bridge in sight, like some of us," Eames cuts in with a weak, sad, smile. "Let's call it the snowball effect."

I hold his gaze, heart going out to him verbally, "I want to save you from that."

His smile beams at me, wide and suddenly alight with playfulness and his old softness and charm, "Well, all you've got to do is keep my secrets for me."

"Sure," I say. "If you keep mine—at least the ones I don't go barfing all over people, anyway."

"Gorgeous, we have a deal," he says, reaching for my hand. We shake and I pull him in by that hand, grab the front of his robe in with my other one, "Is Joe Eames one of the lies?"

"Afraid so," he says sheepishly.

"How about an introduction?" I tease.

"Oh, but that's my biggest secret, love," he says and his nose bumps my ear before he whispers into it a full name that makes me wonder out loud,

"No wonder you can't spell. You used up all of your efforts as a kid to learn to write that whole thing out, didn't you?"

He laughs heartily and nods, "My parents were rather cruel, weren't they?"

"The worst," I chortle. "I'll just keep calling you _Eames_, shall I?"

Nodding happily, he takes my face in his hands and kisses me. It's easily the best kiss we've ever had. Evidently, he'd been somehow _holding back_ until now. Perhaps out of guilt. But now there's confidence, relief, gratitude, tenderness, mixed in with the sheer _passion_. So much more than before…


	15. Chapter 15: I Can't Pretend

**Chapter 15: I Can't Pretend**

Out of the bathroom, lips locked, we fall back into bed. I break the kiss and am talking before I know it, "You're staying with me, right? I mean, now that I know who you are, and even your real name, it means you're _with me_ now and you won't run off to do more stupid shit that'll land you in prison?"

He's grinning, combing the hair over my ear, "You, Mr. Fischer, have landed yourself with a serious-boyfriend shaped pile of criminal records." A quick kiss and then a demand, "Now, if any of it catches up to me, darling, just pretend I've been conning you and that you never had any idea of _any_ of it."

I laugh but he doesn't smile, eyes back to that not-flirty expression, "I'm serious, Robert."

I swallow my mirth and blurt, "Oh God, he's killed people."

"No," he promises instantly. "The only rules I break are governmental ones. And lying to Mum about being a lawyer."

I guffaw, "You're _mum_ thinks you practice law, but actually you're _breaking_ it?"

"Even more ironic is that if she knew how ironic my lies were, she'd _love _it."

"What about your dad?" I ask eagerly, "What would he say if he found out?"

"He'd tell his wife he saw it coming and then his kids, _see what happens when you disobey me_?_ You shame yourself and the whole family._"

"Oh, I'm sorry."

He waves his hand, casually not meeting my eye and I let us move past it smoothly. I go to kiss him but half way there ask, "What was the thought, by the way? That you put in my head?"

"You already know," he says wisely.

"_I don't want to be him_," I say instantly. The thought is still there, only it's tamed now. When before it was an angry lion taking down baby antelope and screaming like it would claw its way out of my skull, now it's curled up in a sunny spot and purring contentedly.

"You were supposed to take it and decide to break up your inheritance, thus getting out of Saito's way."

I snort, "Hate to break it to you, but that's not going to happen."

"We knew the chances of the idea growing the way we wanted it to were one in a million."

"And Saito was calling to get you to do it again or something?"

"Yup and I told him to fuck off; I prefer a boyfriend with two mansions, a jet, and a yacht."

I laugh and kiss him and then add, "oh, and a cabin for skiing."

"Really?" he asks with a quirked eyebrow of intrigue. I nod, blurt, "It's where I lost my virginity."

"I lost mine with a teacher in the projection room of a sex education seminar."

"You're full of irony, aren't you?"

"That or lies."

"Where'd you _really_ lose it?"

"At home in bed in the middle of the day like a normal teenaged boy," he replies as if insulted, but he's grinning. "But do you really buy that I could be like that? Some kind of lecherous playboy with no standards?"

I shrug, "You're sexy enough to get away with it."

"Thank you, darling. And you're too sexy _not_ to have a kink."

I laugh as he kisses me.

"So what do you think? You want to find it?"

"No!" I beg. I really don't want one.

"Come on," he pouts. "I think you have one and you know it, but you just want to hide from it. What is it? Bondage? Fisting? A Daddy kink, perhaps? Or no, maybe it's lipstick. You want me to wear lipstick, don't you?"

"God," I snort, shaking my head, "I think you have a _kink_ kink."

"Consider my kink a universal sexual donor, like type O blood," he replies with a quirked eyebrow. "Anyone can use it to their benefit."

Our laughter dissolves into kissing, and from there, I only say two things by accident (both observations and musings of little coincidence) before I'm finally moving inside of him and biting my lips or his, or his neck, and then I'm so lost in the feel of him that I'm no longer consciously holding my tongue, but I have no thoughts to voice but his name.

I hold off until he comes first, praise mixed with expletives as heat spills between us and then I'm dying in him and all at once, the words are tumbling out of me in breathless jumbles. "gonna keep him, keep him _forever_, so perfect, he makes me feel so goddamn _right._ Eames." My kisses turn the words into senseless moans but he breaks away deliberately, wanting to hear.

I laugh, "he wants to hear it all, the _traitor_, stealing my secrets. _God_ I love it. I'm staying right here, not going anywhere. Mine, _my_ liar, _my_ thief, _have_ to keep him safe, _have to_-" my voice breaks here with emotion, "_can't lose this now I've got it_…" and his mouth covers mine as my whole body shakes.

"Too soon," I'm saying when our lips part, "I'm saying too much too soon, it'll scare him away. It's scaring _me_. So fucking scared."

He hushes me, meeting my eye, clears his throat before saying tightly, "'M not going anywhere, my love."

I close my eyes and bite my tongue and hide my face in his neck so he won't see the tears that spring to my eyes. I draw in a ragged breath, "I don't know what to do to make you stay."

He hushes me again, softly implores me not to worry, to relax, because l couldn't make him leave if I tried. I keep my mouth pressed to him as we both wind down and he breaks the silence with a chortle and all his fingertips sweeping up and down my spine, "Try and say I told you so now."

"But I _did_ tell you so!" I cry, my head snapping up, "Yesterday was a _nightmare_!"

"Always gotta be right, don't you?"

"No, I just always _am right_. I can't help it."

"You haven't turned out to be a freak, though, have you?"

I blush and thank my lucky stars that I didn't do something gross, like say my mother's name or ask him to pee on me. He's laughing because I said all that out loud.

"Post ejaculation is _definitely_ not a good time for the Fisch Filter, then," Eames notes, "I thought maybe it wasn't after the masturbating thing, but now I know definitively."

"Damn, that means no office sex."

"Goddammit to hell," he curses with sincere enthusiasm that makes me laugh and say, "If only I liked being gagged it wouldn't be a problem."

He laughs. "Darling, don't give me ideas."

"He likes gags, likes everything."

"I've always been very open minded."

We snort and laugh as I save myself with kisses to his neck and jaw, up to his lips. When the kiss ends naturally, I am wondering, "—ask me to do something weird, can I be open-minded enough for him?"

He takes charge of the kiss, hands encasing my face, "Just touch me, darling."

A simple request that I am more than happy to fill; my hands race down between us to rub, and as I work to harden him for more fun, I bite my lip; sometimes any words at all can spoil the mood, sometimes silence is best.

He is ready, but I am not. I'm not ready to go spilling my thoughts all over the place again, so I keep working him with my hand, my mouth safely locked with teeth buried in my lip, keeping words as moans in my throat that aid me in my job. Every time I make a noise, he does too, a gasp, a groan, a short laugh, until he is thrusting up into my hand wildly, panting, and in the frenzy and the light taste of blood from my lips, I have only one thing to say,

"I want you to _spill_, dammit, be fair!"

With a shudder he does, physically and verbally, he explodes, "Oh fuck me, you are _good_, darling! Fuck, _so_ _good_ just the sight of you over me! I-I'm thinking _everything_—I want you, all of you! God, _don't ever leave me or make me go._"

I gasp. I hadn't thought I'd get anything real. As my mouth crushes against him, words are sounding, stuffed in my throat by our wrestling tongues; promises that he is staying forever, that I want him to.

I fall in love with him in that moment, just for doing that, for trying to share like I do, for admitting something that raw this soon, on purpose, just because I _asked_.

….

We get dressed and leave the room for lunch. Up on deck, I take a deep breath of the sunshine and salty air. "I love the sun."

Eames just smiles happily, looking at me as I look at the stretch of golden beach beyond the dock, flooded with people and squeezed between sparkling blue water and monstrous, shiny hotels sitting right on the edge of the sand.

"Do you want to go ashore and hit the sights?" I ask. He shrugs heavy shoulders and shakes his head. "Not unless you want to."

"Well what do you want to do?"

"Love, you _know_ what I want to do."

I blush at the pet name. No one's ever said anything like that to me before.

"Like what?" he asks.

I close my eyes and shake my head and he retracts the question, now aware that it was a slip and probably that I had been talking about love. When I peek at him, I can see that he is chewing on the inside of his smile, hands in his pockets. His shoulders are slumped, but it is more of a worn-out stance which he corrects when he sees me looking.

Smiling, I pull myself in to his embrace, since he isn't as easy to move as I am, and his hands trace their perfect tracks on my torso. I have my lips rolled between my teeth as I simply rest my head on his shoulder, so I know my thoughts are silent as I think back over my failed attempts to have a relationship with people in the past.

The men I met at clubs in my twenties were can-do workaholics who had power to some degree (though none as much as mine) who were looking for what I was looking for; a regular, familiar bed, a trusted companion, but little else. One or two of them had openly admitted to, at most, caring for me greatly, and once it had been my three words which had chased him away, but apart from respect and admiration, none of my past partners had shown that kind of emotion; that kind of weakness.

And here I have Eames, who says it casually but seriously, and shows how it is most definitely a strength. I am scared again, but a good kind of scared, like being on a popular rollercoaster I've heard all about. Mostly, my anxiety resides in the speed. I barely even knew this man existed until just a fistful of days ago, when I hit my head and woke to find him between my knees, and now, just hours ago, I forgave him an unforgivable betrayal because I—

"You know, I've never felt this way before," I admit on purpose as the thought settles big and heavy in my chest. I feel like the things we said in bed need to be addressed; I don't want things to get weird between us. "I'm not sure I would have allowed myself to feel this way accept I can't help it anymore. When things pop out of my mouth, I can't take them back and so they become truths—I can't pretend they aren't there."

He nods as I pull away. I lick my lips and shake my head as I squint out at blue sky and bluer water, a warm breeze tugging my hair. "I don't know. I guess I just can't lie to myself if I can't lie to the world…"

Those hazel eyes, usually always glinting with some mischief or amusement, are squinted in the light and his scrutiny. "You're saying you would have talked yourself out of happiness if you could have hidden it back there?"

I nod. "It's just what I've always done, I guess. I don't know."

He takes a deep breath through his nose. "Well, good job that's over. Let it die with Maurice. You deserve to feel joy and hold onto it in any way that you can get, that's whot I say."

I remember the thing he said about being redefined, and I'm still not angry. Why would I be angry for someone ripping the bullshit out of me? I can't be sorry any of this happened, because if it hadn't, then I would have fooled myself into wanting nothing but a life of meaningless sex and money, when the whole time a more fulfilled life was waiting for me with just one little choice, to hold onto happiness instead of insisting I had no time for it.


	16. Chapter 16: How Did We Get Here?

**Chapter 16: How Did We Get Here?**

I give the crew three days shore leave—least I can do after being trapped with my insults for a week straight-but I stay onboard with Eames. He said it not me, I have to hold onto this when and wherever I can.

So we spend our time together, attempting to read another novel, but actually just laughing and talking and kissing, switching it up anywhere on the boat that we please. He's still determined to find my kink; I'm still insisting I don't want one, but am in no way going to deny him his chances of trying to finding it.

He tops me for the first time in the shower. There's a seat in there and he sits on it and I on him, back to his front, in the hot streaming water, my babbling is at times absolutely incoherent as he slides in and out of me, overwhelms me with his skilled hands and mouth on my back and neck.

All I have to say when it's over is his name sliding through my filter in a string of soft murmurs and sniffs, as I curl up in his lap on that shower seat, like a child, and he holds me with the water still washing over us. He volunteers his own thoughts this time without me having to ask. It's a single question, as I'm winding down and my thoughts are staying in more than coming out. He reaches up, cuts off the water, and asks in the sudden silence, water dripping from his nose, "Is it wrong of me not to want you to heal too much? I want to keep you like this forever."

"So if I heal completely, you'll lose interest." I rephrase, flatly.

"No, don't put words in my mouth." He squeezes me, "I just love hearing your heart out loud, Robert." His lips pucker against my temple and he murmurs, "My darling, _dearest_, Robert…"

The beads of water on my skin are already starting to get cold, and I blame my shiver on that. With my head laying on his shoulder, I take a deep breath and think that if I do heal, all I have to do is make sure to I let him know how I feel when I feel it and that I'm nice to everyone, even poor people. That's how to keep him.

Eames chortles and kisses me, "Yes, love, that's 'xatly how to keep me."

…

With the crew on shore leave, it's Eames who does the cooking. He's not as good as Phillip, but, to be fair, that's just conjecture. There's really no comparison, since I've never known Phillip to makes things like Toaster's Struddle and grilled cheese sandwiches-I didn't even know we had that kind of stuff onboard.

Evidently, the staff eats it. I suppose that makes sense, they get up hours before me, have all kinds of chores to do, and don't have time to wait for the gourmet meals which they take hours preparing for me, to be done; they need food that's fast to make and quick to eat.

As he flips a heavily buttered cheese sandwich around in a frying pan, he tells me-at my request-the story about the inception he pulled on me. I've become curious about it, the team he worked with and how planting an idea is done.

Eames is hesitant to divulge at first, as if he suspects me of manipulating evidence out of him which I will use against him later. He compromises by still refusing to give names, using the titles he used before: point man, architect, chemist, extractor, employer, etc.

I'm most intrigued when he tells me that he can make himself look like anyone he wants when he's in a dream. "It's all about tricking the subconscious," he explains to me. "I need a mirror to do it. You see, if I'm in your head, and I move my hands and talk just like Browning-"

He turns from the stove and does such a spot on impression of my godfather that my jaw drops, and he grins and drops it with a shrug, "Then your mind goes _Oh, hold on, I know you_, and the reflection in the mirror shows me who I'm being. Then from there, because your mind also knows the rules about mirrors and things standing in front of them, it automatically makes the two match, changing _me_ instead of the reflection because of how I'm behaving. Do you see?"

"So it has to be someone I know?"

He shrugs, "That, or, at the very least, someone whoever is building the dream knows." He goes back to the frying sandwich and I ask him to do more impressions. He happily obliges, showing me of all my requests. I pick movie stars, throwing names out from George Clooney to Earl Flynn, and even women from Aubrey Hepburn to Angelina Jolie and he does perfect impersonations of them all until I'm laughing so hard, I can't breathe.

It turns out that while I was being the first chair violinist in the top private school of Sydney, he was being the lead in all the school plays; he can still quote quite a bit of Shakespeare off the top of his head and does so without being asked. After our quick meal, I'm hiding a smile behind my hand, eyes wide and drinking this dramatic actor side of his up. He's bounding around the sitting room with energy and the perfect amount of gravitas, doing a soliloquy from Hamlet, when his phone rings.

With a look at the screen he's himself again, but tense, "It's them."

I'm not sure who _them_ is exactly, but understand that it is the other world he belongs to. From his tone, I can even guess that he isn't sure whether or not an enemy is calling or a friend. He clears his throat and answers, "Arthur, you got my message?"

His thick shoulders relax with relief at the words buzzing through the phone. Eames talks in cryptic half answers that I can't follow entirely, though I glean enough information to learn he is talking to someone who's been in my head. I'm pretty sure it is the one who won't survive one night behind bars. It makes me nervous; if this Arthur has sold out men as dangerous as that, then what is stopping him from turning on us?

My lover keeps the phone to his ear, but covers it with his fingers and leans down to where I sit on the sofa and kisses my lips in reassurance. I stand and wrap my arms around him to feel his warm body against mine, a greater reassurance. With a long list of affirmatives that is him agreeing to a plan falling into place, Eames thanks the mysterious Arthur and hangs up. His arms settle around me. "Okay, Saito is determined to strike again," he says angrily.

"What are we going to do? We can't go to the police, can we?"

"No. We will have to handle this on our own."

"How are we going to do that?"

"First thing, we're going to train you properly. You have to know all the best sub security tricks out there." He silently orders me to stay put and disappears to his room for a moment. Then he is back with one of his bags. From it, he pulls a silver lunch box and a black case. The lunch box is a miniature PASIV and the case is full of vials.

My jaw drops, skin flashing cold and rising in a million little peeks, thoughts spilling out freely. "You've had one this the whole time? Have you been using it? Fuck, what've you been doing to me?"

"Hey, hey," he says, abandoning the machine and returning to my side. His hand brushes through my hair, but I move away from his touch. I don't feel well and am shaking.

"I haven't used it on you. _I swear to God_."

"Then why do you have it?"

He swallows and looks away. "It was my back up plan, darling. If worst came to worst and you began implementing too many of us, then I would have been forced to go in, eradicate, and then disappear."

"Eradicate?" I say, head snapping up. "You can do that?"

"'S not easy—and doing it alone, it wouldn't have been pretty. I—"

"You would have destroyed the rest of my mind to save yourself?"

"I never _wanted_ to do that. Ever."

I look down at my feet and press thumbs into the inner corners of my eyes, feeling moisture there. I clear my throat and will my heart to slow down. I believe him, but he would have done it anyway had I not stabilized—painted into a corner and all of that. No other option-_he would have done it_.

"The sick part is I admire that kind of strength of character; doing what you have to for survival…. I like him even more for planning to kill me." I laugh lightly. "Hey, there's a kink for him."

He laughs even though it isn't funny and he sits us both down on the sofa, dragging the dream machine and the filled vials down the table to us. "Once we've got Saito off our backs with all this dreaming business, then we'll play survival games," he promises with a wink.

I laugh and blush.

He pops vials into place and prepares needles. My throat goes dry. "You know how to do this? All the best tricks?"

"Yup. I even know some tricks to get around the best tricks, and I'll teach you to defend against those as well."

"Well, well, did I pick a master of dreaming or what?"

His smile shows me a slither of teeth, tickled and bashful at the same time. "Let's begin."

…..

I'm in the back of a car, snow falls heavily outside the windows, making the wipers work hard as the driver takes us cautiously up the fir tree lined road to my mountain cabin. I'm in khakis and a thick sweater and in the seat beside me, Eames is dressed similarly. His arm is around me, and he's grinning, "Fine, don't tell me," he's saying, "I can always use my _imagination_."

Having gotten lost in his eyes, I frown, "For what?"

He laughs, soft and delighted, "Were you even paying attention?"

"Uh," embarrassed, I shake my head, "No, I guess not. I'm sorry. What were you saying?"

"I asked for the story about when you lost your virginity at this cabin."

I snort, "Why would you want to hear about me fucking another guy?"

"Just trying to fill in all the holes of your past. Maybe then I can find out why you're so timid in sex."

"I'm not _timid_," I retort with some heat to which he chuckles, and jumps his eyebrows with a smile that shows all his crooked teeth.

"But you're not _venturesome_, either, are you?"

I pull out of his arms and look out the window, "I haven't been traumatized or anything. I just prefer the intimate stuff over the kinky stuff. Is that so bad?"

"You're not disappointing me, petal," he reassures, heavy hand on my inner thigh. "I'm just curious about the experience you've had before me. Let's just call it a kink of mine, hm?"

With sudden understanding, I look around at him, smirking, "You want to hear about him so you can pretend you _are_ him, don't you? Be my first."

His purr as he pulls me to him is an answer in the affirmative. I let him put his arms around me again, lean into his strength and his warmth as the car takes a turn with slow, deliberate speed and the wipers up front scrub on the glass and the driver pretends he can't hear our conversation just as we're pretending he's not even there. Eames traces the side of my face, "It was your sophomore year at Stanford, right?" he asks.

I nod but before I can even start on the first detail-the car stops so abruptly that we're thrown forward. Through the windshield, I see the road is blocked by a huge white truck with white camouflage canvas on the back. Soldiers in the same camouflage are pouring out of it, surrounding the car, screaming and aiming big white guns.

"What the fuck?" I demand. There's the sound of the car doors locking and Eames grabs my face and forces me to meet his eye.

"Lesson one: How did we get here?"

I blink at him, mouth agape, "What the fuck are you talking about?" I demand, but he shushes me, pushes hair from my forehead and won't let me look out the windows where the men who are now pounding on the windows and ordering us to get out or they'll shoot. "Focus, how did we arrive here?"

"We're in the fucking _car_ Eames, on the way to the cabin for a long weekend ski trip. What do you mean _how did we get here_?"

"Where were we before this car?" he asks calmly. I start to answer the airport, of course, but stop abruptly upon realizing I can't recall the scenario. There is a moment of pure confusion and panic, but then, all of a sudden, I remember something. It's like a tiny Christmas tree light bulb in the dark, muted by deep water and far away from me, but glowing enough for me to see it.

"This is a dream," I tell him. Eames smiles and in the front seat, the driver-panicked-finally apologizes to us before he leaps out of the car at the behest of the soldiers, who instantly grab him and drag him away. With his door opened, the soldiers unlock the other doors and have them open in a moment.

"Eames!" I call as rough hands grab me. I'm dragged from the car, thrown down onto the snow. It's cold and the air is thin and frigid. It all feels _so real_. I roll and manage to look up at my attackers just in time to see the gun take aim.

BAM

I wake up abruptly with the feeling of a bullet in my heart. I gasp and sit up straight in the bright warmth of the Pacific climate. I'm on the sofa in the sitting room of my yacht, and Hawaii looms outside the portside windows. Eames is awake a moment later and smiling at me, "when the day takes a turn out of the ordinary-even if it's just something small like getting the very first cab you hail when it's pouring rain, or meeting a talkative stranger-always make sure you can trace your week to exactly how you got there. Okay?"

I nod and ask, "What's with you and snow?"

"How do you mean?"

"When you were telling me about the Inception, you said your level was a snowy mountainside. Did you pick that setting again for old time's sake or is it relevant?"

He's impressed, and says as much before explaining, "When I'm building the dream, I try to make sure it is always snowing. It helps me to distinguish from reality since my totem won't work in a dream I've built."

"You're totem?" I ask. He explains the important role that small familiar objects play for frequent dreamers, flashing a poker chip at me that I'm not allowed to study too closely, and continues to say, "But in your own dream you're totem is going to be like normal. It's best, then, to kind of build something familiar and tale-telling into the setting. I picked snow because I never go to cold places. Ever. You have to be careful like that. The combination of a familiar totem and a familiar setting can happen in reality and will result in you killing yourself for real. The combination of the two totems has to be unlikely to happen in reality."

"Yes, I see," I say. I set right to work on finding a totem of my own. It does not take me long. The rosin for my violin; I've worn familiar grooves into the sides of it with my bow and because it has aged significantly since high school, it would be difficult for anyone to replicate it. When I show it to Eames, I don't let him study it for too long and he rewards my caution with a kiss.

"Now you would do well to decide on a setting totem, too." Eames says, all business, "Not being a dreamer, it's unlikely you'll do a lot of dream building, but I have encountered a gambit here or there that tricks the mark into building the dream, thus getting around it if he or she has training enough to carry a totem for safety."

"Jesus, you fuckers think of everything, don't you?

This makes him grin and he winks, "Anything to survive, remember? Now that you have a totem, you're safe from most bozos with a dream box. But real professionals can find out you have a totem and how to replicate it. Then all they have to do is make you build the dream, but they won't be able to stop you from building your own totem into the setting and if you do that, it will guarantee you are never properly confused."

Nodding, I lean forward and reset the timer, "Got it. Let's go down again."

"Right way, Mr. Fischer," he says with a wink.

And thus goes the training. He pulls me under into his dream (a snowy park, a cold parking deck with brown snow slosh on all the tires and fresh snow in the wipers, the frosty backyard of the house I grew up with the first few snowflakes beginning to fall) and waits for me to figure it out on my own that it's a dream. Once I am passed panicking or getting confused, calmly checking my totem and finding ways to kick myself awake, we move on to lesson two: _know who your head of security is._

Apparently, that's how they got me, Eames and his friends, because I trusted it when they told me they were part of my sub security. In-depth sub security training, Eames assures me, would never have let that happen, because my head of security would have been my trainer and not some mysterious Mr. Charles whom I had never met. Eames is my head of security now, and we have a code phrase to avoid anyone forging his face in order to trick me.

From there it is lessons three through five, all of which have to do with recognizing very specific tactical maneuvers that are common in mind crime and, as the crew return and we head back to LA, those lessons are carried out in the privacy of my room, and spread out over the next four days between sex, violin, reading, eating and sleep.


	17. Chapter 17: All Ashore

**Chapter 17: All Ashore**

My rosin looks familiar, but the freesias in the vase on the end table are yellow. A look through the other rooms of the house show similar bouquets brightening each room from every surface; there's even a painting of yellow freesias in the garage and the soap in the bathroom takes the shape as well as the smell.

I find the gun box under a quilt in the top of my closet-a quilt patterned with yellow freesias, no less-and completely ignore Kirsten and Uncle Peter as they beg loudly and half in a panic, for me not to hurt myself.

The touch of the cool gun metal to my temple unnerves me, but I focus on the freesias in the vase on the nightstand. The flowers which I loathe because they remind me of my mother's funeral would never _ever_ be on my nightstand.

I pull the trigger.

I'm in bed on my yacht and the world is morning bright outside my windows. I'm shaking because of the leap of faith I'd just taken; despite all of the flowers, I had not been _completely_ convinced. I scramble to check my totem and find the square of rosin familiar. I scan the room and don't find a single flower, yellow, freesia, real, printed pattern, or soap.

Beside me, Eames wakes up laughing. He pushes himself up and catches my lips with his and then cries, "Well done! We were three layers down, you forgot you were dreaming, but you figured it out without even anything out of the ordinary happening first!"

I sigh, fall back on my pillows with my hands over my eyes, "God, I hate killing myself."

"Good, it means you're sane." Eames says, gently removing the IV from my wrist and packing up his dream machine. I drop my hands and look at him. His bare back is lovely to watch as he bends down over the edge of the bed and his shoulder blades roll under his skin as he moves his arms.

I smooth my hand down his spine. "I love your back," I say and sit up to kiss the back of his neck. He makes a noise of approval and shifts back closer against me. He turns his head to kiss me and after wrapping my arms around him and sinking into the feel of him for a moment, I break the kiss to ask, "What's it mean when I'm aroused after killing myself?"

Eames laughs, pushing his bottom harder against me, "Just means you have an innate appreciation for being alive and celebrating it." His heavy hand hooks me by the back of the neck and draws my mouth back to his.

With a sudden urge to get a more exciting view of his back, I break the kiss and go to my knees, taking hold of his hips and tugging. "Up," I order and he goes to his knees in front of me, sitting on his haunches first and twisting to kiss me some more.

With our systems excited by somnicin and the events of the three layered dream we'd just died out of, it does not take long before we're naked, and I'm inside him. We've only barely gotten going, though, when we are interrupted by a knock on the door.

We both jump in surprise and move as if to cover ourselves, and I cry in the same panic as a few days ago, "Don't come in, I'm gaying!" to which Eames dissolves into such fits of laughter that he collapses onto the bed, rolls onto his back so that I can see that his face is red and he can't breathe. The door, of course, is still closed and was never in danger of opening, and Captain George calls tentatively,

"Sir? I've brought us into port in LA. All Ashore, if you will."

"Thank you, Captain," Eames calls through his roaring laughter, barely managing the syllables, and then with great gusto, he manages a clear, "and thanks for not coming in because Mr. Fischer is _gaying_!"

Petrified by what Captain George must think of us, I order him to shut up about it, but he shakes his head, "Gaying! What does that even _mean_?"

I playfully twist a handful of his hair and say through my teeth, "I don't _know_, I didn't even know I said it until you started laughing."

He's still snickering as we make our way onto dry land, showered and dressed, and then he's finding absolutely nothing funny anymore. He starts swaying. Then he collapses over a trashcan after knocking its lid off and starts vomiting just as violently as his first day at sea. People skirt around us, giving the horrible sounds a wide birth. I stay with him, rubbing his back.

"Not again!" he moans into the smell.

"Oh, pumpkin, we should have filled you full of more meds before you got off the boat." I am kicking myself. I knew this would happen, I just forgot.

"Uuuurrrg. What's happening to me? We're on land!"

"Land sickness. You still have sea legs."

He groans, "Whot happened to me land legs?"

I laugh, "'Me land legs'?"

"'S cockney 'olrigh'? Me origins come out when I'm Tom and Dick-" he barfs here and I choke back a chuckle and kiss the back of his neck, receiving a sharp, "ROBERT!" from the crowd. I straighten and whirl. Uncle Peter bears down on us with Kirsten and three detectives who have their gun holsters loosened. At the sight of it, my stomach tightens and sparks shoot up my spine.

"No," I breathe. Eames straightens too and staggers.

"Chrise, 's oll gone Pete and Tong now," he gasps. "They'll have me in a flowery dell for a tea leaf and you'll be on your tod."

Before I can even _try _to make heads or tails of this, he's looking at me he warns, "Remember whot I told you."

He is pale, beads of sweat have collected at his hair line, and I feel him shake as he summons the effort to ignore his dizziness in order to survive this. I want him to just run, but he can't even let go of the trash can, and I see no way he is going to talk his way out of this.

Something insane occurs to me.

"You shut up," I say suddenly. When the lynch mob arrives, I flash them my biggest smile. "Hey everyone! I didn't know we were getting a welcoming party!"

"Robert," Peter says sternly. He is trying so hard not to look at the way I am still holding onto Eames that he can't even look at me. "I'm sorry." He doesn't sound too sorry about anything.

I look at Kirsten. She looks properly pained for being on the other side of the very distinct line between me and Eames and everyone else. Her thin plucked eyebrows rise even higher as she reaches for me. "Rob, we were trying to call you."

I ignore her silent plea to let go of my boyfriend and I look at my phone. It's dead. I laugh. "Oh, whoops. Forgot to recharge it. What's up?"

"Robert," that seems to be all my godfather can say. He is now looking at Eames, though, as if he is trying to figure out exactly what animal he'd hit with his sports car. One of the detectives cuts in here,

"Mr. Fischer, we have enlightening evidence in your case, and have reason to believe Joe Eames may have been involved."

Eames barfs in that second, missing the can slightly, and sending everyone a foot or so away. The moment of chaos disrupts their collected front against us, and I take charge of the moment,

"What evidence will that be?" I ask, still smiling like this is all a fun game. "Surely Saito hasn't admitted to anything." I am relying on it that Saito is still insisting it's all a ploy of Fischer Morrow to ruin his name.

"Robert," Uncle Peter is flustered with impatience, "Eames' only excuse for why this happened to you was that he was fucking the man who spiked your water on the plane! But we've discovered he has a wife and kids-Don't you see? If that man is not gay, he couldn't have been flirty with him. It means they're in on this together!"

Eames straightens again as if to say something, and I tighten my grip on his wrist to shut him up. I start to laugh.

I get puzzled looks from everyone, including Eames. I throw my head back and laugh louder. They move away from me in the same way they had dodged the vomit.

Still laughing, I choke out, "Please don't track down and bother than nice man. He didn't do anything."

Eames belches and swallows, and puts his head down. I stick out my lower lip, and stroke his hair. Kirsten snorts. "Robert, what the hell are you saying? You _made all of this up_?"

"Of course, you _idiots_!" I say with what I now think of as my Old Robert Want To Be Like Dad manner.

"What? Why?"

I shrug. "Why not? I'm in charge of the _whole empire_ now-my work load has _doubled_. It's not like you would have ever let me take a month off if I just _asked_ for it, Uncle Peter. No really. Even if I had gone away, you'd find a way to cut the trip short."

"Sir," one of the FBI agents asks, "do you mean to say you _lied_ about what happened on the plane from Sydney to LA?"

"Completely," I say lightly with a little shrug, "I wanted to go away and I came up with a reason that would let me go and that would make _keeping me away_ everyone's highest priority."

"Why?" Uncle Peter chokes, looking horrified.

"So I could fuck my boyfriend without interruption," I tell him evenly and with a pat on Eames' back. Peter blanches and looks away. (He is like Dad in regards to my sexuality. _Keep it to yourself, Robert, for God's sake_.) Kirsten and the detectives look away as well, but more out of the blunt nature of my comment.

I focus on Eames, who's still clinging to the trash can, his forehead resting on the rim, his eyes locked on the pavement at his feet, and he's moaning. I stoop to give him another kiss on his neck and can actually feel how tense he is under my lips. As I do this, one of the detectives speaks up, breaking the stunned silence,

"So you are _not now_ nor _have you ever_ had a problem with controlling your inner and outer monologue?"

I look the beefy guy from head to toe and drop a wink. "How'd you like my acting?"

Eames chokes and sticks his head back into the bin. The following retch isn't a real one, but they don't know the difference.

The FBI agents trade looks, shoulders relaxing, guns getting clipped back into place, eyebrows jumping. One of them even says, "Told you so."

Uncle Peter's mouth is hanging open. "Are you kidding me right now Robert? You brought a _federal investigation_ into your game of _hookie_?" He's red in the face and I know that in a minute he will literally start jumping up and down like a southern preacher. "For Christ's sake, you could have faked _anything_, and you fake _mind crime_? Whatever happened to cancer? You fake cancer, take a couple of years, beat it, and become an inspiration!" Just like I thought, he's starting to pace, stomping with every step. The stomping always comes before the jumping, "You don't fake _mind crime_ and lose all your credibility!"

"Gentlemen," I cut in, speaking to the detectives, ignoring my steaming godfather who's still screaming, now a list of other illnesses I could have faked. "I apologize for my little game getting so out of hand. I do realize that ample amounts of tax dollars and government resources have been put into my case, and I am of course, going to pay it back with interest. I'm sorry for wasting your time. Now, if you'll excuse me, my boyfriend needs a bed and some medicine."

I drag Eames out of the trash and hook his arm around my shoulders. "Walk in a straight line for me, Joey."

They part like the Red Sea for us as I head for the car. The beefy agent calls after me, "Sorry, Mr. Fischer, could you explain Dr. Evais' professional diagnosis, then?"

I laugh some more. "Dr. Evais is indeed a professional. I love that woman. Sassy, you know? I felt bad lying to her about the weird things she found in my head. But I couldn't admit that I knew what they were, I needed her to say they were dream fragments from someone else."

"Robert, I am going to _kill you_." Uncle Peter's rant has been wholly unbroken in the background and that line breaks through just then. I grin when I look around to find him hoping on the spot as he outlines the damage I've done and how he's going to murder me with his bare hands.

"Mr. Fischer," one agent says, tactfully ignoring my godfather like the rest of us are doing, "we will be contacting you again before this case is officially closed."

"Yeah, yeah," I wave a hand, my knees shaking under the weight of Eames, who's sagging into me is not an act. He burps and murmurs in my ear, "I really have to lie down now, pet," as I say to the nice men with guns, "do what you have to do boys."

They walk away, shaking their heads and the one who apparently predicted this is laughing. Kirsten helps me get Eames into the car and then she subconsciously straightens her hair and clothes as she looks me over. "So. You really went out of your way."

I lift a shoulder. "Honestly, it wasn't supposed to go this far, but," I look into the car at Eames, who is sitting with his face hanging out of the other window like a drugged dog. "I'm kinda glad it did."

"I can't believe you didn't let me in on it!"

"Sorry, but you not knowing was vital."

She sighs, happy to be important to my schemes. "I guess. And hey," she nods at Eames. "When did this happen, huh?"

I bite my lip in honest bashfulness. "A couple of nights ago."

She stamps a sharp foot in surprise. "And you didn't _tell_ me?"

"We'll talk later, promise," I say, getting into the car. Behind my best friend, Uncle Peter has stopped his yelling, but is still pacing, his tie loosened, and his phone now at his ear as he's fast at work trying to clean up my mess. "We've all got work to do, so let's get to it."

I give the driver directions, and as the car begins to crawl along through the parking lot, Eames leans into me to whisper as lowly as possible, hand slipping between my thighs. "You're a _natural_, darling."

I smile as he leans away again, back to the window where there is fresh air and no risk of ruining the interior. His hand continues to squeeze my thigh though, in a way that lets me know he is dying on the inside because of the fast con I just pulled back there.

My heart is still racing from it—I lie all time, part of any business—but this is the first time I've ever lied to my family and to the US government and I did it all on the fly, for this man beside me. With a jolt, I think that maybe I'm in a dream; which would explain our damn good luck. I close my eyes and trace the events of the last few days up until this one until I'm sure I'm awake.

I am pleased to learn I am a natural at yet another difficult task; mostly, I think, because it means that I can stay with Eames no matter what. If we can't live my life, we'll just live his.

I lean back in the seat, perhaps feeling a tad bit land sick myself. Or maybe it is just the overwhelming relief that my Fisch Filter had been securely in place just now and the truth hadn't bled through my act. That wouldn't have gone over well, and I would have lost everything; would have lost him.

Eames' motion sickness doubles once the car picks up speed. We stop twice so he can get out and spit up on the shoulder of the road. Then finally, we are in the hotel, and he is curled in bed with everything room service can provide to ease his discomfort.

"How are you feeling?" I ask later, between phone calls with the board, and the FBI, and the press-we'd kept my condition out of the papers, of course, and that call is just an interview about my plans for the company and how taking a cruise to Hawaii is at all conducive given the current climate of corporate business.

I climb onto the bed as carefully as possible so as not to rock it. His color is back and he smiles. "Better."

"So I've got good news and bad news for you."

"Let's have the bad, then, love."

"Peter fired you."

"Thought so."

"But the good news is you have a job waiting for you. If you want it."

"What might it be?"

"My personal attendant in all things, not just business. Seriously, your main job will be to monitor me and prevent me from ever slipping-I don't know if you noticed, I convinced them all I'm of sound mind and I have to stay that way. I'll need your help with that. You're the only one that knows the truth."

He nods, one curt nod, a soldier taking his commands. I give him a devious smile, "And you will have to please me in other ways too."

We chuckle and he nods. "It'll be my first legitimate job since my paper route when I was a boy."

"Snowball is melted," I say with a tone of completion. He takes a deep breath. "Now just how am I to explain to Mum the logic in trading _my own law practice_ to be a manservant?"

"Well, if you want, we can switch it up for the holidays and I'll be _your_ manservant."

He purrs, "I like that."

We kiss; a quick string of repetitive smacks as he wriggles out from under the blankets. "Now, gorgeous, is there anything you need to do right now?" he asks, fingers trailing down my throat. "Or is it safe for us to trash your filter?" he breathes with a tremble at the thought, "I want to hear more of you."

My grin pulls my lips from between my teeth, but my phone rings and I shake my head with a promise, "Tonight," before I answer it and roll out of bed away from his tempting reach. I feel his eyes on me as I leave the room and he calls after me,

"Hurry back so I can _gay_ you!"

I whirl, covering the phone with my hand and crying with reluctant laughter, "I'm on. The phone!"

He goes to his hands and knees on the bed and looks predatory as if he's coming for me. I shut the bedroom door on the enticing sight and return to my call with a clear of my throat and of my mind, but a smile on my lips, "Yes, I'm back. Now about that merger…."

A/N: I understand from my research that cockney phrases are more a tongue-and-cheek thing and are rarely used all mashed up in one sentence like that. But who cares? It's _fun_. In case you're wondering what he said, "Christ, it's all gone wrong. They'll have me in prison for a thief and you'll be on your own."


	18. Chapter 18: A Thin Lie

**Chapter 18: A Thin Lie**

With time to think on it, my intelligent Uncle Peter is not entirely convinced that I made the entire thing up for the sole purpose of whisking a secretary away for uninterrupted sex. It's for this reason that he does not let the investigation shut down. But the case goes cold quickly enough.

_I made it up _is a thin lie, I am aware, but it was the best I could do in the moment and I'm still quite proud of it. There is nothing anyone can really do to disprove it unless I _say_ there is an alien thought in my head. Which I won't. Not ever. I'll take Eames' secrets with me to the grave.

Maybe, someday, if the investigation yields any proof, the most anyone can be charged on is _attempting_ inception, which Eames assures me most of them will be able to pay their way out of and this helps me to sleep at night; want for money has never been cause for a single ounce of worry in my life.

Meanwhile, Eames and I quickly decide that even the middle of the day, when my filter is strongest, it is best he sticks close. This is more than a preference for each other's company; having a natural conman immediately at hand is _unbelievably_ beneficial in making business deals.

The man knows just exactly when to fake this or to mention that or approach me in the middle of a negotiation and whisper sweet nothings in my ear that are instantly interpreted by others as Important Information that makes my enemies nervous and gives me the upper hand…

And then, when business stretches on, and I start to get tired, he's always the first one to notice and is quick to make something up that gets me away and in private before I reveal my thoughts. On the rare occasion it happens in front of someone, he's quick to spin it and make it seem natural, like I'd been making a joke in the vein of our private sense of humor.

I _love_ living with Eames instep beside me, naturally falling to the right hand side of me, physically filling the metaphorical position he has in my life. There is no office sex, and Eames is at times _unbearably_ professional in that regard.

In fact, beyond Kirsten and Uncle Peter and few others, no one knows I take my quiet, diligent, handsome assistant home and curl up in bed with him as he reads us to sleep. Or that I play my violin every day for an audience of one, who turns out to be a man of _impeccable_ taste in classical music.

I make it a point to play all the time because Eames points out that when I spend hours lost in the music I'm less inclined to blurt things out. Thus my life becomes Eames, music, business, and then everything else. The pine-tree smell of rosin, the sounds of strings, the smooth wood, stacks of music, the snap of case latches, these things are part of my every day.

Musical.

That word is me, now, when it didn't used to be, even back in high school when I played all the time, because back then I only did it because I _had_ to not because I _wanted_ to. I enjoy this new dimension in my life, this thing that would remain even if-God Forbid-I should lose the dimension of Eames. In short, being musical is as safe as it is fun and relaxing.

I actually catch Kirsten once as she's talking to someone about me in regards to what gift they should get me in the office Secret Santa that Eames arranged, "Oh, no, no, no, don't get him that, Rob's not sporty like Maurice. He's more musical…."

That is the first I ever heard anyone but Eames talk about me existing outside of the context of work. It doesn't end there, either. I hear things like, "he's not _always_ such a bastard-I mean, he's usually nice. You know, while he's inclined…" which is far enough from my father, who was _never_ inclined unless there was something in it for him, that I'm made happy by the comment.

Another reason why the comment brightens my day is that it proves I'm becoming a better man, thus pleasing Eames. He, in turn, stands up straight and proud and handsome as I like, even while staying out of the way in corners. He only slouches when he's somehow reminded of the weight of his criminal past or what he did to me, just like I only reveal that I'm still partly a son-of-a-bitch-Fischer when I'm tired and think mean judgments right out loud.

Even as time passes, my damaged filter never does fully heal, and this tends to be the root of all our biggest fights. (When tired, I occasionally insult him-his history, his weight, his habits, or, when I'm truly horrible, his size again-and he gets prickly and fights back, of course.) It causes a fair share of bumps, but one thing Eames keeps proving is that I can't scare him off and that is maybe because my unique condition also is to be blamed for our happiest moments.

I finish a difficult piece and lower my violin, feeling good in the way only accomplishing a flawless song can do. Eames speaks up, asking softly, "did you mean that?"

"Hm?" I ask, unconcerned as I clean rosin residue from the instrument. By now, I'm long passed getting upset that I've blurted something when it is just the two of us. He doesn't answer and I look up. He's studying me with an expression I've never seen before-or, at least, haven't seen in a long time. He's almost guarded, like he doesn't know what he's looking at.

I try to hear what I've said like I sometimes can, an echo of myself, a hindsight point of view of my own words. But this time there is nothing but the music and I frown, "What is it? What did I say?"

Eames shakes his head, "You didn't mean to; don't worry about it."

Worried that I insulted him, I put my violin aside and lean towards him, where he's sitting across the room at the window looking out at the ocean. "Don't do that," I plead, and stand, going to him. I can see at this proximity that his cheek is smeared like he wiped away the moisture of a stray tear. "Don't forgive me without even telling me how I hurt you."

I reach him and he looks up at me, raises an eyebrow, "Hurt me?" he asks. His eyes sparkle with amazement, "You really _don't_ know what you said, do you?"

I'm growing tired of his game, and practically snap, "No. I can't hear the echo." I admit this because he knows what I mean; I've explained it to him before how I can be the last one to know what I say when I blurt.

"That's because you said it about five minutes ago, in the middle of the part you improvised."

I frown, recalling that I had deviated slightly from the written notes, doing more what felt natural than what the composer had scored. I still can't recall having spoken and now I'm worried because it isn't even like I tend to speak while playing. In fact, it's the complete opposite.

"What did I say?"

Eames meets my eye and they're soft and filled with love in the way I've come to see them in our most intimate of moments. His smile is small, not playful, not even very confident, but happy. "You said that you want to marry me."

Having been certain I had been cruel, it takes a moment for me to understand what he says. He watches me steadily as I shift through my thoughts again, trying to determine if I had been on such a train of thought as I played. I hadn't been, not that I can recall. I just know I'd been moved by the music and lost in it. As I am so often moved by and lost in Eames.

I finally smile, "Well there it is, then."

He shakes his head, waves a hand, "Let's not do this now, Rob. You didn't mean to ask."

"But you meant to bring it up," I counter. "I never would have known the difference if you hadn't said anything."

A crease shows up between his eyebrows and his head is down. "I know, but I-" he cuts off and doesn't finish. I lift his chin, meet his eyes, hazel so beautiful, "But you want to get married as much as I do."

He looks up, one corner of his mouth hiking up, "But do you _really_ want to? Or are you just taking your own word for it? You couldn't even remember _thinking_ it!"

"No, but I can remember _feeling_ it," I reply, taking both his big hands in mine, pushing my fingers between his. "Trust me, I _want_ to marry you."

"Well then ask me already," he says with a wicked grin.

"What?" I asked, confused, "I already have-"I cut myself off upon realizing that I hadn't actually; I'd only made confessions that I desired it. With a soft laugh, I straddle him. "What do you say about us getting married?"

His hands slide around my sides and up my back and his smile is bright, "Oh, 'olright then."

**FIN**


End file.
